


Good Training

by twistedmiracle



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-31
Updated: 2016-05-31
Packaged: 2018-07-11 09:21:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7042306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistedmiracle/pseuds/twistedmiracle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry has a new assignment from Auror Robards, but it's nothing like he's ever done before. Not as an auror, anyway. "Junior auror, son." "Yes, Chief Auror Robards."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Good Training

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for sugareey, in the 2013 HDS-Beltane fest!
> 
> Betaed by: Claret24. Britpicked by: Pionie
> 
> This was a fun challenge! I tried to use as many of the things the prompter asked for as I could. I hope folks like what I ended up with! These are the ones I think I managed to fit in:  
> "H/D. Definitely like my boys solving mysteries, going on adventures when they don't want to be paired up. I like humour.  
> "Sexual kinks, requests: Lots of alcohol, Groping, snogging, biting and rubbing should be involved. You can go as high as NC-17.  
> "Could totally see the boys in a few years after the war.  
> "Prompts for your gift: the Black Lake, blankets and mud."

Chapter 1

"Harry." Robards leaned over the edge of his desk and affixed Harry with his famous, fatherly glare.

Harry sat up straighter in an effort not to twitch. Robards hated fidgeting. "A calm auror is a smart auror," he liked to say. Also the ever-unpopular "Can you hear me, auror? Or are the crickets in your knickers too loud?"

"I think I understand," Robards continued. "When you were on your own, you went on instinct. It worked for you, too. I see that. But you can't do that anymore. You're not a… a lone wolf anymore. Now you are an _auror_. A _junior_ auror. Son, we have laws to follow. There are procedures. I do my best to get rid of anything unnecessary. I don't like to burden my force. But you second guess, constantly."

"But, Sir…" Harry tried. For once Robards didn't interrupt. Harry paused, waiting for it. When the flow of discouragement didn't return, Harry found he had no idea what he wanted to say.

Robards leaned back in his swivelly chair. He seemed, for once, to be in no hurry to run roughshod over Harry's objections. Harry tried to come up with some.

"What about the Gavidge case?" Harry smiled, because surely that time when he illegally used Veritaserum on someone who turned out to be not the low-level potions smuggler they had suspected, but actually the head of a criminal potions syndicate that imported nearly extinct Magical animals and harvested their organs for potions; and worse -- had probably at least once kidnapped and "harvested" a Muggle-born infant, was proof that Harry's unorthodox methods were better and faster than Robards' painful paper trails and lengthy "procedures."

Robards smiled, but it was sad. "Yes, Harry," he agreed slowly. "But what about the Rellujier case?"

Harry's face fell. It was true that his methods sometimes failed spectacularly. Mr Rellujier had, or so he claimed, forgiven Harry for mistaking his mentally ill wife for a true vampire, and Harry had insisted on paying for the funeral. He squirmed in his chair like a child as he remembered telling Robards the terrible guilt he'd been forced to admit. "If I had followed the proper procedures for containing even the most powerful of vampires, Mrs Rellujier would still be alive and getting the help she needed."

Harry sighed. Being an auror was very different from what he had expected. Perhaps if he, Neville, and Ron hadn't been allowed to fast track through so much of the training programme…. And yet, he wondered how he would have fared with the full Academy experience after all. At night, when they went out drinking, he heard things from his auror partner, Newland, and Ron's as well, that made the pre-War training programme sound a thousand times more boring and restrictive than even the worst year spent at Hogwarts.

"I… I'm sorry, Sir," Harry sighed.

"I know you mean well, Harry." Robards leaned forwards and clasped his hands together. "No one could doubt that. But you don't seem to believe, deep down, that the rules exist to protect the general public. Every time you come up against something that constrains you, it is as though you view it as a… a personal affront. I've never seen an auror with that attitude who managed to succeed in the long term."

"What do you mean by that, sir?" Harry asked, a lump in his throat. His hands felt cold. He couldn't leave the force! What the hell would he do with his life if he weren't an auror? What would the Weasleys think? Who would he go drinking with? And what would he talk about when he did?

Instead of answering the question, Robards pulled out a sheet of parchment. "I've an owl from the headmistress at Hogwarts," he began. He looked at the parchment, apparently reluctant to let Harry read it for himself. "I think it might be the solution we both need. At least…" he scrubbed his tired face with his other hand. "At least temporarily." He handed over the parchment, and Harry skimmed through it quickly. _Sir… write with dire need… irate parents, frightened students, shrieking armour… emeralds spilled everywhere… library full of screeching books… kitchens in complete upheaval last Tuesday... almost certainly caused by wraith of Snape… Harry Potter…. Please._

Harry looked up from the parchment, hope blossoming in his chest. "I can take the assignment?"

"Normally I'd be uncomfortable with the headmistress' request," Robards admitted slowly. His chair was tipped back and his arms were behind his head. He was looking up at the ceiling.

"I don't accommodate the call for a particular auror very often. There has to be a damn good reason." Robards unlaced his fingers from behind his head just enough to look Harry in the eye again. Harry made sure he saw a junior auror, sitting up straight at the edge of his metal folding chair, exuding eagerness and obedience. Robards sighed and looked up the ceiling again.

"But this time… well, not only would this probably be good for _you_ , but McGonagall has a very good case for needing you, quite specifically. You know Hogwarts better than most, you have a hell of a track record for solving mysteries specific to the school, and Snape's wraith itself is insisting you are required. I suppose it's that last one that's tipped me over the edge on this."

Robards sighed again, but this time it sounded a bit faked. "So yes, Potter. I will give you this assignment."

Harry managed not to do a fist pump in front of his boss, but he could feel a vibration of excitement start in the soles of his feet, and he tried not to bounce and jiggle. He forced himself to sit still and listen.

"It's damned open-ended, too. You should just stick with it until the problem is solved or you, I don't know, get sent back by the headmistress. She and I will keep in touch about your progress and whether or not you need backup or similar. And it is open-ended in the sense that there aren't a lot of rules to follow, either. Not that I want you to get into that habit, but it does suit your… skill set. Normally the banishing of bizarre manifestations isn't the job of the aurors at all. But this one requests you, and is causing damn near criminal mischief, which is very unusual. You can't arrest a wraith, but you can solve a mess or restore peace. Those can be our work as well."

Chapter 2

As instructed, Harry Flooed to the faculty Floo near McGonagall's office the next morning, nine on the dot. Robards would have been impressed with his sudden interest in punctuality, he knew. The night before he'd left his partner and friends at the bar earlier than usual, and packed a small rucksack as his boss had suggested. This morning he had eaten a large, healthy breakfast thanks to Kreacher. He thought he should probably be nervous, but instead he felt more comfortable than he had in months. That was probably a bad sign, he realized, then dismissed the thought completely. Hogwarts! Crazy Hogwarts mystery to solve! He felt great already.

Professor Flitwick met Harry at the Floo. The little man was already on his feet and heading impatiently for the door when Harry looked up from a first pass at brushing the largest clumps of soot from his auror robe.

"I'll help," Flitwick said, and threw a soot removal spell at Harry over his shoulder as he opened the door. "You're wanted immediately in the headmistress' office!"

Harry refrained from chattering at Flitwick as they made the short walk to the gargoyle. Flitwick was rushing beyond anything Harry had ever seen of him outside a battle, and while it wasn't hard to keep up with someone so short, it was clear that small talk wasn't welcome. So Harry looked around to see if Hogwarts appeared different. From the letter McGonagall had written Robards, he rather expected some chaos, but -- at least in this corridor -- everything seemed quite normal. He wondered about this only briefly before Flitwick was rapping sharply on the door at the top of the stair and they were entering McGonagall's office.

It was all Harry could do not to blurt something like "What the fuck is _he_ doing here?" when he walked in; as Draco Malfoy was sitting in the chair in front of the headmistress' desk. Malfoy's hair was drawn into a prissy, girlish tail at the back. His mouth was drawn into a frown that somehow matched it.

Harry managed to keep his mouth shut, somehow, but he saw his inability to keep his shock off his face acknowledged in McGonagall's tiny grimace of disapproval.

"Thank you, Filius," the headmistress said instead of chastising Harry verbally. She shook Flitwick's hand and he left with a nod, leaving a blank-faced Malfoy and a disconcerted Harry to await her explanations.

"Mr Malfoy, Auror Potter," McGonagall began in her most clipped, no-nonsense tone. "Thank you both for arriving promptly. As you now both know, we have a situation here at the school that we have come to understand is being caused by the wraith of the late Professor Snape. I hope the wraith itself will be able to find and contribute to this meeting, but it seems to have little self-control. This, of course, is a large part of where our concern arises."

She sighed once and walked to her window. Looking out over the frosted landscape seemed to calm her, and she continued. "As a currently matriculated student, Mr Malfoy understands that since we have returned after the New Year, what had been a challenging situation, has become untenable. The wraith of Snape became… agitated. The wraith itself cannot explain the change, but the reasons why are of course not as important as the existence of this wraith at all."

She put a hand upon the mullioned window and paused before she turned around and looked at them both with concern. "The wraith has managed to explain the problem to me with at least some clarity. And the origins of this problem are the reasons that the two of you, specifically, are being tasked with fixing it. You see,"

"I!" The Sorting Hat yelped, in a strangled voice. "I shall explain!"

Shocked, Harry and Malfoy both twisted toward the Sorting Hat, which contorted itself into a painful-looking shape before once again opening to speak. "Your fault!" it yelped, and McGonagall tutted at it.

"It is not their fault, Professor Snape. Not either of them. They are merely involved, and primarily via their parents, at that. But please, do explain. It is your story to tell."

The Hat ruffled itself, appearing to regain dignity. "Potter," it started. It sounded so much like Snape himself that Harry was astounded. The voice wasn't quite right, but the contempt was as evident as it had been since the first moment of Harry's first potions lesson.

"Many years ago, shortly before I left Hogwarts, I attempted to bring Lily Evans to her senses, one last time. I offered her a ring, an _expensive_ ring, as a gift. I asked that she accept it as a token of her friendship with me, and a sign that she thereby renounced that little _despot_ she was going out with."

"My father?" Harry stage whispered at McGonagall, and she nodded, frowning.

Unconcerned by Harry's question, the Hat continued. "I had not only purchased this ring for Lily, I had prepared it beforehand with potions and tinctures. They were designed to make the ring impervious to all damage, to protect your mother from harm, and to prove to the wearer, and all who observed her that she was… loved."

The Hat shuffled on its brim slightly, and everyone looked away from it for a moment, while it collected its thoughts.

"As you can probably infer from the historical record, Lily refused my ring. Furious at her stupidity, I threw it into the Black Lake. That night I left Hogwarts forever and swore myself in service to the Dark Lord himself." The Hat seemed to sigh, then straighten. The pointy tip stood taller for a moment.

"The Headmistress has done much research in the last few weeks. She has learned a great deal, which we must inform you of before you will be able to locate and destroy the ring. In discarding the ring here: prepared at Hogwarts, for a Hogwarts student, myself then still a Hogwarts student, I inadvertently created what the magical literature deigns a 'Bounded Adorn Destine.' Which is to say, I tied myself to this place. Or rather, I tied my soul to Hogwarts, effective upon the death of my body. That I died so close to the school's grounds compounds the ring's power. A Bounded Adorn Destine is a rare creation." The hat sniffed with what sounded like pride.

"These objects are also known as.…" the Hat stopped. It rocked slightly on its brim, and the room's inhabitants waited for it to continue, but it merely made a tiny huffing noise.

After a brief pause, McGonagall took up the narrative. "Thank you, Professor. The object the professor inadvertently created is colloquially known as a Heartcrux. As he implies, it is an object of great power, but it is not in the least Dark. They are, however, shockingly rare. And the situation it creates here, of this wraith tied to Hogwarts, by a Heartcrux he created as a student, is even more rare. You see, the best way to get a Heartcrux to release a bound soul, a wraith, is by bringing it again to the one who refused it before the trapped person died, and to have that person finally and formally accept the object. The recipient doesn't even have to wear or carry the Heartcrux, merely accept it as their own possession. Since by doing so, the person releases the miserable, caught soul of someone now deceased who once loved them greatly, no one is ever known to have refused such an object."

She sighed. "The complication in this case, arises, obviously, as Lily Potter is no longer alive to formally accept the ring. In addition, we do not know its exact location, only that it almost certainly still remains within the Black Lake." The headmistress took a fortifying breath, and seemed about to continue, but now the Hat took back the floor.

"You two _must_ find it. You're the only ones who can. Potter should have a connection to it through his mother. Draco, obviously, through the Dark Lord. In essence, when Lily rejected my ring, I then rejected the ring -- and Lily -- for the Dark Lord. Which is how Draco, who hosted the Dark Lord in his home and was bound to him unwillingly, in his own way, becomes the other best choice to seek and destroy this Bound Adorn. Especially since Draco then rejected the Dark Lord by refusing to kill the headmaster and refusing to identify Potter. Therefore you are the only ones who will be able to find and destroy it. Which you must do before Beltane, the first anniversary of my death, the twentieth anniversary of the ring entering the Black Lake, and a day of tenacious Earthen magical power."

The Hat paused again, and the Headmistress turned to Harry and Malfoy. "The professor is correct. These are the things we have learned and inferred from the research I have been able to do. I have collected supplies for your quest, and will entertain any reasonable request for supplies not yet already gathered." She tapped the edge of her desk and gestured for them to stand, which they both did quickly, as though in competition. "Any questions?"

They both shook their heads. Harry shouldered his rucksack. His mind was burning with the overwhelming amount of detail and uncertainty he'd just had dumped upon him. He felt he surely _should_ have questions, it was only that he couldn't think of a single one. Ron probably would have had ten.

"Very well then," McGonagall said with approval. "Come with me and I shall show you the supplies the faculty has helped me put together for you."

Chapter 3

The compact olive drab submarine tent seemed to have -- if not a lot of space, then at least everything they could expect to need: torches, cots and blankets, food, some spell books, a painfully incomplete map of the lake, and a parchment detailing everything the headmistress had learned. They were to report back as they saw fit, and were instructed to come back and think through the facts with McGonagall should they hit an impasse. They learned how to operate the submarine tent without speaking to one another even once. Harry felt a nagging need to clear things up with Malfoy somehow, but they were all being so efficient, so _busy_.

Worse, the damn Sorting Hat was there too, still speaking with Snape's pinched mouth. McGonagall, despite her usual kind firmness, seemed almost eager to get rid of the two young men, and Harry felt a bit powerless to stop the rollercoaster. So he learned how to use the tent, how to use the tiny kitchen, how to operate the emergency hatch and where the chocolate was.

Soon he and Malfoy were alone in the damn thing, steering it cautiously into the lake. Malfoy had volunteered to pilot, and -- seeing McGonagall's frown -- Harry had refrained from insisting that no, he, Harry, the _Gryffindor_ , should drive the submarine. The Sorting Hat had seemed expectant, and Harry was temporarily glad to surprise Snape's awful, bitchy wraith.

Now, however, they were alone. Malfoy had the controls, and Harry felt twitchy. He tried to keep mum anyway.

He was doing a crap job of it.

"You wanted to navigate the craft, didn't you?"

Harry should probably have taken a deep breath. "Don't you think this is weird?" he demanded instead, then flushed. They sat side by side in cramped captain's chairs. They were surrounded by dials, cupboards, shelves, stacks and displays. Malfoy perched in front of a small wheel, Harry in front of a set of somewhat interactive maps and view screens that showed all the other sides of the ship. They both had a good view of what was right in front of them. Nonetheless, the little drivable swimming tent thing felt claustrophobic already.

"Which part?" Malfoy said, and made a grumpy strangled sound. Harry realized it was probably meant to be some sort of laugh. He tried to formulate something worth saying, but Malfoy kept talking instead.

"The part where you can keep yourself from dying, accidentally, because another teenager rejected you _once_? Or the part where someone like _Snape_ is the only one who's done it in decades?" He sounded angry. He was sitting ramrod straight and gripping the wheel tightly. "Maybe the part where Snape still can't believe a pretty Muggle born girl would turn him down, when he was the sort of guy who would turn to the Dark Lord the minute she said 'no'?"

"Or," Harry tried, "the part where _you_ and _I_ are the only ones on earth who can save Snape from himself?"

Malfoy turned suddenly and shot Harry a look of confusion. Then he looked back at the water and steered slowly around a large tree branch that was rotting on the bed of the lake. "That's a good one," he finally conceded.

Harry wanted to tell him not to sound annoyed, but he stopped himself. Instead, he tried for another quip. "There's always the part where McGonagall is being held hostage by the Sorting Hat?" Malfoy smiled, so Harry tried again. "Or the part where they pulled you out of your N.E.W.T. makeup year to rescue the school from talking library books?"

"Or the part," Malfoy added, "where they pulled a star auror out of the field to shut up some suits of armour." He turned and grinned nervously at Harry, but Harry couldn't help but scowl.

"Sorry," he said after a moment of awkward silence, "try again."

"Er," Malfoy said, sounding uncomfortable. He stared straight ahead and kept both hands on the wheel even though Harry could see absolutely nothing in front of them but water.

"I think I'll go get some chocolate," Harry said, and fought his way out of the tiny space his huge chair had been crammed into. "Want some?" he thought to say, feeling angrily magnanimous as he opened the cupboard.

"Sure," Malfoy said curtly.

Harry grabbed the largest chocolate bar he saw. He couldn't see a single reason to save it for later. "Do you know a spell for dividing things exactly in half?" he asked Malfoy stiffly as he picked his way back to his chair.

" _Divisus_ should work," Malfoy said.

"I only know how to divide things into a lot more pieces than two with that one," Harry said quietly, putting the bar between them on the console. "Do I just say 'divisus', or what?"

Instead of answering directly, Malfoy raised his wand at the chocolate bar. " _Dih-vih-suhs doo-ay_ " he intoned slowly, and the bar and its wrappings broke cleanly down the middle.

"Thanks," Harry said, and handed half the bar to Malfoy, who unpeeled a bit of the wrapper, took a bite and put it on his lap. Then both his hands went right back onto the steering wheel and his eyes stayed rigidly forward. He drove carefully, as though it required tremendous concentration. Harry couldn't think of a thing to say.

"I'm sorry if I offended you earlier," Malfoy eventually put out into the awkward quiet.

Unable to stand the insanity any longer, Harry's response to this polite apology was to lose his shit. "Come off it, Malfoy! There is no fucking way! You fucking live to offend me!" Harry smashed his right hand down on the console and turned, eager to see how Malfoy would rise to the occasion.

Malfoy didn't disappoint. "You stupid fucking… hero!" He turned the wheel abruptly to the right and allowed the machine to idle. It settled slowly into a small depression at the bottom of the lake, silt rising visibly through the water outside the windows and screens in front of them.

"I don't _live_ for anything having to do with you at all, you self-righteous, self-satisfied prick! As a matter of fact, I was minding my own damn business, trying to prepare for a mother load of N.E.W.T.s., keeping my fucking head down and staying the hell out of trouble, when _you_ had to fucking show up and fucking ruin my year!"

"Me?" Harry said, his blood pressure rising enjoyably as he warmed to an old, familiar task. "I had nothing to do with you being in on this bullshit and you fucking well know it! It's your precious, coddling, arsehole, head-of-house Snape who called the both of us to solve his pathetic little problem! It sure as fuck wasn't me! I wouldn't call for your help with anything!"

"It's not pathetic and it's not little," Malfoy sneered, turning to face Harry instead of the window. His face was flushed with anger and his eyes flashed. "You think McGonagall herself would resort to putting _us_ together and all the rest if this wasn't serious? The little kids are terrified! Snape's wraith is a fucking menace and he's ruining the school year for everyone! He's a million times worse than Peeves ever is, and he's getting more dangerous every damn day! He's already sent at least three people I can think of to the hospital wing!"

This was news to Harry and he paused in surprise. Malfoy took advantage of the silence to continue ranting. His half of the chocolate bar fell to the floor as he shifted forward in his chair in order to shake a finger in Harry's face.

"As per usual, you think you know everything. But you don't know anything! You jump in like you can handle fucking anything!"

"Yeah?" Harry demanded, pushing himself up by the arms of his captain's chair, "Well, that attitude of mine worked out pretty well for you in the Room of Requirement that day, didn't it!" He was breathing hard and his heart was pounding. He was furiously angry over Malfoy's cheek, but, he was vaguely aware, he also felt fantastic.

"Regardless of that one," Malfoy countered, looking only slightly calmer, "it nearly killed me long before that, when you took my wand and escaped from my house. Me, and both my parents."

"Wait," Harry said, confused. "That's not what they said at your father's trial. When they heard all that evidence that made them decide not to try your mother, and to just put you on probation this year and not bother with a trial at all."

"Yeah," Malfoy conceded, looking down. "My parents thought we would look too self-serving or something if we said that after you all escaped, the three of us got put in our own dungeon." His voice was quiet now. He sounded embarrassed. "Or maybe they just thought that part was too embarrassing to share. It was in the legal briefs, just, no one ever said anything about it out loud, in public." He still wasn't looking up from the floor.

"Oh," Harry said, feeling stupid. His anger was dissipating. He thought he might miss it. He wondered how long the Malfoys had been down there, mouldering in their own jail, but he felt wrong asking. Not that he had any other ideas of what to say now. His exhilarated catharsis was melting into confusion and social stupidity.

Malfoy took the opportunity to change the subject.

"So what the fuck are we doing here, anyway?" He spread his hands out, palms up. "How the hell do we find this ring? We know _Accio_ won't work, they tried that months ago." His smile looked apologetic. "What do you think we should try first?" He sighed theatrically.

Harry, grateful not to be forced to answer for his earlier outburst -- which he now felt a bit stupid about -- tried to give the question his honest attention. "Well," he started slowly, looking out the front window, "last time I was down here I found grindylows and merpeople. The ring's been in the lake for almost twenty years, so if anyone has found it, I'd think it would be one of them?"

Malfoy nodded slowly. "That could explain why _Accio_ didn't work, you know. If it's inside some merperson's house. It probably stopped at the wall and that was the end of that."

"Yeah," Harry agreed. "Er, how will we convince them to give it back, though?"

"I don't know yet," Malfoy said nervously. Do you speak Mermish? Because I don't."

"Oh, the merpeople speak English," Harry said, finally feeling confident.

"No they don't," Malfoy said, looking at Harry like he was a moron.

"Of course they do," Harry said, confused. "I spoke with more than one of them the last time I was here."

"Sure you did," Malfoy said with exaggeratedly false patience. "In Mermish."

"I think I would know if I knew Mermish!" Harry yelled, getting right pissed now.

"You used Gillyweed!" Malfoy yelled back. "We all saw you grow gills and webbed hands! That gave you Mermish!" Malfoy shook his head, clearly amazed at Harry's stupidity. He took a deep breath and put his hands palm-down on his knees. "Obviously you didn't know that. I hadn't realized." Now he sounded conciliatory. He needed to stop doing that, or Harry's head was going to explode.

Harry managed to find a kernel of manners. "They probably sent us with Gillyweed?"

"No, but they sent us with some books, didn't they?"

"To learn _Mermish_?" Harry said, horrified.

"No!" Malfoy said, sounding equally horrified. "I was just hoping for a translation spell!"

"Oh!" Harry said, surprised. "I've never heard of that, but yeah, that would be brilliant. I'll, er, go look for something like that?"

"Okay," Malfoy said. He started the submarine up again and began driving forward carefully. Harry dropped a book on the floor and cursed, but Malfoy kept his eyes forward even though they were going really slowly and the lakebed was empty here.

Sighing quietly to himself, Harry continued his search for a book to help them talk to the Merpeople. Working with Malfoy was going to be a real stretch. Apparently for both of them. He swallowed yet more anger. He couldn't let Malfoy win.

There were two versions of the translation spell, and one was clearly well-suited to the complexities of bubble-head charms and other adaptations. Harry and Malfoy each learned it quickly and hoped it would work.

That night they managed to share one of the premade meals, trade off in the tiny cupboard sized bathroom, and climb into separate cots without fighting. Harry felt that by choosing first he was practically daring Malfoy to challenge him, as he picked the one far closer to the front of the submarine and to the bathroom as well, but Malfoy said nothing and merely turned down the covers on the other cot. They barely spoke to one another at all, as it went, but that seemed a good way to avoid fighting.

Harry found sleep elusive at first. He lay in his barely-large-enough bed, wondering how he and Malfoy could manage to work together long enough to fix Snape's mess and never have to see one another again.

Chapter 4

Not long after they woke, they took the tent right to the edge of the Merpeople's town. Shrugging, silent, they each shot a translation spell at their own mouth and a bubble-head charm at their own heads. Thus fortified, they stepped out of the submarine tent -- only letting in a few gallons -- and began to walk along the muddy lakebed toward the rocky homes at the edge of the village. It was still small, and even from the edge Harry could see the tall, crude statue of a merperson, holding a spear in one hand and some sort of musical horn in the other. He looked at it again, wondering if they had changed it since the last time he was here, or if he simply didn't remember it as well as he'd expected.

It was probably due to his attention to the statue -- instead of himself and what was right in front of his face -- that allowed Malfoy to get the drop on him. "Potter!" he heard hissed through the water, just before an arm swung out to stop him. Then he finally noticed the gathering merpeople. And their spears.

"State your business, wizards." The mermaid who spoke was intimidatingly old and tall. She'd swum forward of the rest of them and they arrayed silent behind her, some looking organized, some looking nervous. Her green and white hair seemed impossibly long and it swirled behind her, decorated with shells, pebbles, and other ornaments Harry couldn't quite place. Fish bones? This, he realized, must be the Merchieftainess, the political ruler of this village. He swallowed, unable to think of a way to diplomatically approach a request for Snape's ring.

"Ma'am," Malfoy said. Harry saw that Malfoy affected a small bow and flustered, he followed suit.

"We are sorry to intrude upon your town. We do have some small business, and we hope you can assist us in resolving it quickly. We are here on behalf of the Head of Hogwarts school."

Relieved that Malfoy seemed to have at least some skill, Harry watched as the Merchieftainess nodded at Malfoy to continue. There was a magnanimity about her. Harry felt like she was so fully in charge that no one ever needed question it.

"Almost twenty years ago," Malfoy continued, looking directly at the Merchieftainess, "a foolish young Hogwarts boy threw a trinket into your lake. A ring, specifically. He had prepared it as a gift for a pretty girl; my companion's mother, as it happens," he gestured vaguely toward Harry but continued to look at the Merchieftainess, "but she refused him. Angry, he threw the ring in your lake. Unfortunately, he died in the war we've just had aboveground. A war that was ended, and won, not coincidentally, by my companion."

Harry felt himself blush. He hadn't expected that to come up. But the Merchieftainess gave him an appraising look and seemed somewhat encouraging now. Malfoy looked at Harry, who stared back, unable to fathom what, if anything, was expected of him. But Malfoy nodded solemnly and then turned back to the Merchieftainess.

"In order for that Hogwarts boy to move on to the next world, the ring he threw into your lake must be found and destroyed. We are hopeful that you can assist us in obtaining it, as what is left of him is wreaking terrible havoc on the school."

Then Malfoy bowed from the waist again, very slightly, and took one small step back, as though to indicate that he was done talking.

"I see," the Merchieftainess said slowly. She looked calm now, and had allowed the butt of her spear to rest on the bed of the lake, as though it were no longer a weapon, but now more of a walking stick. Not that she walked, of course. Harry was grateful again that no one seemed to expect him to talk to anyone. His thoughts were so ridiculous that he knew he would surely make an idiot of himself if he opened his mouth. Probably worse.

"I believe I know the ring you speak of," the Merchieftainess said. "But if I am right, then I have… frustrating news. I am Merchieftainess Murcus, and have been for nearly thirty-five years. Twenty or so years ago, a child of my village brought me a ring he'd found while out gathering pretty rocks with his brothers and sisters. It was silver, with a fancy stone that shone like the moon. Engraved inside it said…" she paused and looked up to think. "It had your letters, ess ess, then a letter I did not recognize, perhaps a short tee. After that the letters ell and ee. Does that sound like the ring you seek?"

Malfoy smiled broadly. "Yes Ma'am. That is exactly the ring we seek. Severus Snape, plus Lily Evans. Can you help us find it?"

"Snape!" The Merchieftainess said, alarmed. "The foolish boy you spoke of was Severus Snape? He has died?"

Malfoy looked alarmed. "I apologize! I had no idea you knew him. Yes, I am sad to inform you. Severus Snape was murdered by Voldemort's familiar in the last hours of the war."

"Oh," Merchieftainess Murcus said, looking honestly miserable. "What horrible news. He made overtures to us after he became headmaster of the school. He took the trouble to come down here, told us the whole story of the war, informed us of Headmaster Dumbledore's death, warned us against Voldemort's armies and helped us protect ourselves should the war come underwater. He was a very fine man. A very good wizard."

"I am genuinely sorry," Malfoy said, sounding completely sincere, "to have to be the one to inform you of his passing."

"So he needs this ring destroyed in order to fully die?" The Merchieftainess asked. "That is awful news. As I implied earlier, I no longer have it. I used it to pay our taxes, many years ago."

"Taxes?" Harry said stupidly.

The Merchieftainess turned her narrowing eyes from Malfoy to Harry.

But Malfoy jumped in, and to Harry's surprise, he found himself yet again grateful and even reluctantly impressed. "I, too, was unaware that you pay taxes, Merchieftainess," Malfoy said. "I apologize for the sorry state of our cultural exchange. Clearly we wizards have done a poor job of learning about your civilization. Would you be so kind as to tell me to whom your village paid this tax? I fear my companion and I may have no choice but to ask that party to give us the ring."

Feeling utterly out of his depth, Harry just nodded at Merchieftainess Murcus, hoping his confusion could be mistaken for respect -- at least through a bubble-head charm.

"I would be more than willing," the Merchieftainess said, looking down at them both with sympathy, "I am happy to tell you that I paid the ring to King Greynrushes. I can give you a map to find his castle as well. But I expect you will need to do more than ask for the ring. He will want at least equal compensation."

Harry swallowed, but Malfoy nodded. "Would galleons be acceptable, do you think? Or would he want jewelry to replace jewelry?"

"Jewelry," the Merchieftainess said with authority. "He has many wives." She made a tiny snorting noise and shook her hair, which waved gracefully behind her. Some of her warriors frowned, and two or three swam a foot or two closer to her. This appeared to be some sort of strong political or cultural disagreement. Harry noted it, but didn't have any idea what it might mean for him and Malfoy, now or later.

"Then we shall offer him jewelry in exchange," Malfoy said with assurance, and Harry felt oddly comforted by it.

The Merchieftainess turned her head and nodded at a merman near her, who swam off and entered the largest building in the village. "He will fetch my map," she said. Then she frowned. "Will you be able to duplicate it? It is my only copy." The merman emerged again almost immediately, holding a rolled scroll.

"I don't think that will be a problem," Malfoy said, and the merman handed the map to him when the Merchieftainess nodded at him with a smile.

Malfoy took the scroll and unrolled it gently. It was ancient, and parts were a bit hard to make out. Harry wasn't touching it, but if he'd been asked to guess, he'd have said it was probably made of some type of leather. Malfoy was holding it gingerly. The merpeople mostly looked like they trusted him not to damage it, but one or two seemed to be looking at Malfoy with real suspicion, despite the approval he'd received from the Merchieftainess. Harry made sure his wand was still firmly in his hand.

"It seems to be a venerable artifact," Malfoy finally said.

"It is extremely old," the Merchieftainess agreed. "I hope a copy will be adequate to get you where you need to go."

"I don't wish to be disrespectful," Malfoy said slowly, "but with magic, I might be able to restore it somewhat. If that would be welcome?"

"Oh!" the Merchieftainess said, and looked, for the first time, truly surprised. "Could you? That would be very welcome, indeed."

Harry looked around and saw from the faces behind her, that it was. Now no one looked suspicious or uncomfortable. Instead, he saw looks of hope, and looks of appreciation. He even saw some gratitude, even though Malfoy hadn't done anything to the map yet.

"I think…." Malfoy said slowly. "I think you should unroll it completely, and hold it up. And then I will cast some gentle magic, and it should repair the map, at least somewhat. All right?"

By answer the Merchieftainess simply took the map from his hand and gestured to the merman who had fetched it. Together they stretched it out, gently, using all four of their hands. Now Harry could see that that left side of the map was quite faded, and that there were tears in the leather all around the edges on the left. The bottom left corner was gone, as well.

At a nod from the Merchieftainess, Malfoy raised his wand for the first time since they'd begun talking with the merpeople, and said, simply, " _Reparo_." A jet of pink light emerged from his wand and lazily wafted toward the map through the water, colliding with it visibly, and spreading over the surface before sinking in. The merpeople and the two wizards watched together as colour returned to the map in force, and then, as the magic spread into the leather, several of the tears knitted themselves back together.

"Would you like to try as well?" Malfoy said to Harry generously, and Harry found himself yet again thrown off by a Malfoy who was thoughtful now.

"All right," Harry said simply, and looked at the Merchieftainess, who nodded, a huge grin on her face. " _Reparo_!" Harry said, casting firmly, and his light was a deep fuchsia.

This time the colour intensified far less, but the leather gained visible texture, the last of the tears vanished, and the corner that had been missing grew back.

"Marvelous!" the Merchieftainess exclaimed, and dropped her end of the scroll. She swam forward enough to take Malfoy's left hand and Harry's right into her own hands, dragging the two wizards closer to one another. "And now you will make a copy for yourselves!" She declared, sounding joyous.

Malfoy gave Harry a meaningful look, so Harry raised his wand and, in quick succession, cast and then ended the Gemino Curse. A second map peeled slowly off the first, falling onto the bed of the lake. Malfoy stepped forward and picked it up.

"This one won't last forever," Harry said to the Merchieftainess. We have to make sure to take the copy and have you keep the original."

"How long will it last?" Malfoy asked Harry.

"A year or two?" Harry said, uncertain. "Twice that? Long enough for us, I'm sure. But nowhere near long enough for the village."

"Thank you, young wizards," the Merchieftainess said. "You have done us a real service. Let me do you one as well. Come into my home. I will teach you how to follow the map, and serve you a meal. I hope you like fish?"

"Fish" turned out to be a great deal like the sushi Harry had learned to love in London. Cold, raw, wrapped in seaweed, and remarkably tasty. Harry and Malfoy managed the rest of their time with the merpeople fairly easily, since they were now, suddenly, greatly appreciated. Once or twice someone turned an amused eye on Harry when he said something unflattering or a little foolish, but he no longer worried so much that he would get Malfoy and himself into serious trouble. When they were done they had full bellies, new friends, and a rather amazing map that promised to lead them right to King Greynrushes' castle. Malfoy thought it was near the Ionian Islands, off the coast of Greece. Unsurprisingly, a mermaid map was very different than one that primarily concerned itself with _land_.

With permission from the Merchieftainess, that night they left their tent right where it was, and they slept at the edge of the village. In the morning they would hurry back to Hogwarts for more supplies, to seek advice, and to hopefully obtain a nice piece of jewellery.

Chapter 5

They were climbing the stairs to McGonagall's office unannounced, when Malfoy heard something and stopped walking. He put a finger to his lips but Harry had already taken the hint. They both stood on the stairs, making no noise and listening intently. It didn't take long before Harry heard something -- probably the Sorting Hat again -- complaining angrily, presumably to McGonagall.

Draco cast something surreptitiously, and then every word was clear.

"Of course those weren't my real reasons, you old cow! I can't believe you fell for all my bullshit! Everyone knows how I feel about that horrid little bastard!"

"Mr Snape!" Harry heard bitten out in McGonagall's shocked brogue, but the other voice just steamrolled over her again.

"Not to mention my idiotic Slytherin protégé'! If anyone deserves to clean up my messes it's those two arseholes! Not that Potter has a chance in Hades. I'm sure Draco sees him for the complete deadweight he always is, and is cursing my name for having saddled him with such an incompetent and self-important whiner!"

Malfoy turned his head toward Harry and gave him an uncomfortable, lopsided frown. He shook his head once, a short 'no.' Then they turned their ears back to Snape's screeching wraith.

"By insisting on those two I use the one to boost the other's reputation. The irony! Since only Draco deserves even a _chance_ at a good reputation whereas Potter should be dead for real instead of me! The little bastard stood there and watched me die!"

McGonagall made a gentle tutting noise but the wraith barrelled on.

"But if Potter's undeserved reputation can enhance Draco's, then all the better. Draco has enough stacked against him these days. And don't even try to tell me he can overcome it! Nothing you say, no N.E.W.T. scores, no 'highest honours' certificate from stupid Hogwarts will overcome what Lucius saddled that boy with!"

There was an inaudible response.

"No, all the crap I fed you was true, obviously. Potter _is_ the only person who'd been in the black lake, and Draco _was_ my responsibility when the unbreakable vow was still in effect, but I hate both of those damn guttersnipes and I love the idea of shoving them together! And then Draco will fix it all and force Potter to admit he's an idiot! Potter is useless and why no one can see it but me I will never know!"

There was an angry murmur from McGonagall and then the wraith began screeching again, but Harry motioned to Malfoy and they both snuck down the stairs silently. Harry motioned again, and together they began to walk toward the great hall. Lunch had ended recently enough that they were able to scare up a house elf who happily brought them a few heaping platters of leftovers, and they ate together in an excruciating silence for a few minutes.

Stewing silently in shame, Harry thought about what Snape's angry ghost had accused him of. It was true. He was the shittiest auror ever. He'd let the war drag on for far too long. He'd ended the war by standing there and letting Voldemort bounce-kill himself off Harry like he was some sort of inanimate object. Nothing more than a trampoline. How could he possibly think he had the bravery or capabilities to accomplish anything? He should leave Malfoy to this and… what, go back to Auror Robards? Merlin. He was a mess.

"Er," Malfoy said after a large swallow of pumpkin juice. He cleared his throat. "I don't think you're useless, you know. The merpeople were impressed to meet the wizard who defeated Voldemort. And you knew how to duplicate the map and I didn't. And, er, I wouldn't want to do this stupid job alone. Not really. Not at all."

"So working with me is only better than being alone?" Harry asked, feeling bitter. He _had_ just stood there and watched Snape die. Sort of, anyway, but what the fuck was he supposed to do? He was no healer! He hadn't even finished Hogwarts yet! Not that Hogwarts had any classes on healing. Or first aid, even. This wasn't his fault, damn it. He stared at his lunch.

"No," Malfoy said quietly, and waited until Harry looked back at him. "That's not what I meant to say, and if came across like that, I'm sorry. I mean, you're a good person to work with. Also, Snape's wraith is, well, it's like Snape, but completely unhinged from all consequence. It's like it's all his anger and all his discomfort and all his misery, from his whole life, and none of his discretion or better nature. At all. I told you he's been getting worse. I think this, er, outburst, is just more proof of that."

"Thanks," Harry said grumpily, feeling like shit anyway.

"I could, er, go or something," Malfoy said, and Harry looked up at him again. Malfoy looked uncomfortable. Harry realized that although Snape had been far nicer about Malfoy than about him, he'd nonetheless insulted Malfoy pretty viciously, and Malfoy's dad, too.

"No," Harry said slowly, "no. You should stay and eat. I'm not trying to make you leave. You're right. Snape's wraith is unhinged and even when he was alive he always treated me unfairly, always hated me. I should have known better than to think death would improve his personality." He stopped suddenly, realizing that was a bizarre way to word it.

Malfoy looked at him funny, and then tipped his head a little, and then he smiled.

"That's funny," Malfoy said, sounding uncertain. "You have a good sense of humour." Then he smiled a large smile and said it again. "No, death wouldn't much improve Snape's personality, would it?" he laughed.

Startled, Harry laughed as well. Malfoy laughed harder, and that made Harry laugh with far less control, and he wiped at his eyes. Then Malfoy snorted really loudly, and it sounded profoundly undignified and also just ridiculous, and Harry soon found himself flat on the bench, laughing hysterically and helplessly while the snorts and chortles emitting from Malfoy on the floor on the other side of the table just egged him on.

They were powerless in the throes of this mutual fit of laughter when McGonagall found them. Harry saw her feet and tried to regain control. Malfoy succeeded first but not by much. Smiling, tired, they both clambered back up onto opposite benches at the Ravenclaw table and apologized to the headmistress.

"No need to apologize," McGonagall said, smiling warmly. A house elf let me know you were having some lunch. When you're done eating, I hope you will catch me up on your quest. Did you obtain the ring?"

Harry gestured to her to sit, and between bites the boys caught her up on what had happened in the Lake.

The next morning, after a night in two separate guest suites for visiting parents or other dignitaries, and a large, filling breakfast, Harry and Malfoy headed out to the submarine tent still parked at the edge of the lake and strenuously protected from student tampering with multiple layers of warding. In his pocket Harry carried a truly ostentatious moonstone ring.

McGonagall had dredged it up out of Snape's things, most of which had been handed over to her for safe-keeping until his will was found. "My old friend, Rabbi Mendel Jacobs, would have called this 'ongepaotchket.' It's fussy and overdone, isn't it? Too many swirls and furls and shiny bits. But it was Snape's. Or, rather, it was his grandmother's. And it's got a moonstone. I hope it will do as a replacement."

Chapter 6

First they had to steer the tent back into the Black Lake. Then they had to head for the far end, closer to the Forbidden Forest but as far from Hogsmeade as the Black Lake got. There the terrain of the land turned more mountainous, and the Lake turned into more of a Loch, inching between two enormous hills that helped barricade the Forest and Hogwarts and made them as geographically isolated as they were. They slept one night at the bottom of this trench, then a second, though they were moving as fast as the tent would go. Finally, on the third day, they hit the North Sea. It was then that Harry began to understand what a huge undertaking this was.

"Wouldn't it be easier to _Apparate_?" he finally asked Malfoy, staring at the map again. That morning, after multiple trials and errors, he'd managed a charm that showed their tent on the map with a glowing white dot, and he was dismayed to see how much ocean they had ahead of them. They had to go completely _around Spain_.

"Could you _Apparate_ half this tent and all the crap in it?" Malfoy asked mildly. He was steering again, but they'd come to an easy truce on this after hearing the wraith insult them both behind their backs; taking turns every day and even spending half the previous night driving. Harry had declined to go to bed and had covered a lot of ground while Malfoy had slept, and then when Malfoy awoke he'd taken over and Harry had taken a long nap. Despite the potential of this new schedule, however, the sheer mind-numbing boredom and length of this trip were making Harry feel desperate. They needed a solution.

"No," Harry said unselfconsciously, "but look at this, Malfoy." He pointed at the map, finger-tracing the route the Merchieftainess had outlined. "We're going to be underwater for a fucking month. Maybe two, if we run into challenges. There has to be a better way to do this. Maybe a portkey?"

Malfoy looked ahead and saw that the water was clear for a long ways ahead, so he set the steering wheel on autopilot and turned his chair to face Harry. "Show me again," he said quietly.

Harry showed him. "This is where we started, see? That was Tuesday. Now it's Friday and this is where we are."

Malfoy looked at the map carefully and said nothing. Vibrating discomfort, Harry found himself barely able to keep silent while Malfoy considered what Harry had said.

Harry hated sitting. He hated waiting. He hated doing nothing. He didn't even really like _driving_. They needed to get to Greynrushes' castle and he wanted to get there today, frankly. He'd had enough of this shit, and really, so had Hogwarts.

"We can't portkey this whole tent," Malfoy said finally. "We can't Apparate with bubble-head charms on, let alone carrying all this gear, no matter how well we shrink it. But… I agree with you. This is horrible. We need a better way. I don't know how the merpeople stand this."

"I think," Harry said slowly…. "I think I have an idea."

Five and a half hours later, sitting on a Eurostar train speeding them toward Paris; Harry and Malfoy toasted the brilliance of being able to combine wizard and Muggle lives. As train rides went, it would be a long one: from London, to Paris, to Milan, and finally to Lecce, Italy. It nonetheless easily beat the magical alternative. They had driven the tent back onto the Scottish coast and shrunken everything down into four parcels that looked like Muggle luggage. They'd made it all as light as possible via magic (not very light, but they could still carry it), walked to the nearest wizard Inn (thanks to Malfoy's knowledge of the local area, that had only taken ten minutes), _Flooed_ to Hogwarts and spoken frankly and worriedly to McGonagall. Then, with her blessing, they'd _Flooed_ to London and bought train tickets to Italy with a Hogwarts expense account. Once in Lecce they would put the tent back into the sea and cross the Mediterranean. They estimated they had cut seven weeks off their trip. One way.

It was a twenty-five hour overnight train trip, so they'd had to hire a sleeper car for the leg that took them from Paris to Milan. Malfoy was the one who'd figured out that McGonagall hadn't cut off their supply of "amenities." Though they had spent hours sitting stiffly next to one another with Muggle magazines and making rare and awkward small talk on the way to Paris, once they switched trains it hadn't taken long for them to find the café-bar and get rollicking drunk, sitting on the floor of their tiny sleeper car, making fun of Snape's wraith and finally learning to get along.

"Snape's such an arse." Finding himself wanting to compliment Malfoy, Harry wandered into an assumption. "Bet he doesn't know French or anything posh like that. You know, like you."

"I don't know French," Malfoy said, looking confused.

"Really? I totally thought you knew French," Harry said, and drank more Rosé. He was starting to lose his filters. Normally he would never have suggested that he thought (knew) Malfoy was posher than him.

"Why would you think I knew French?" Malfoy asked giddily and took another long swig of Merlot directly from the bottle he'd bought from the café-bar. The train only sold those two kinds of wine, so they had easily bought both. Harry had thought they would share, but when Malfoy had let him try the Merlot he'd discovered he hated it. The Rosé was a little better. Being tipsy was better still.

"Er…" Harry said, and lay down on the floor. There was so little space. "Because you guided us through the train station when we switched trains?"

Malfoy just looked at him like he was stupid, and, properly chastised, Harry admitted that he could have done that also. The signs had been very clear. And the maps. "Because your last name sounds French?" He giggled.

"Does it?" Malfoy said, and tipped his head heavily onto his right shoulder. "I guess it does. I hate my name. I mean. You hate my name too, right?"

Harry rolled onto his back and looked at the ceiling. Under his back, the train rushed toward Milan. It felt completely unlike the Hogwarts Express, but it still felt like a train. He couldn't quite pinpoint why, though.

"I don't like the 'Malfoy' part," he admitted, feeling unsure of himself. "It reminds me of your father, and he reminds me of Voldemort. But your first name is pretty brilliant, don't you think? Named after dragons and something in the sky… a galaxy? I can't remember."

"A constellation." Malfoy sighed. "So fucking pretentious."

"Don't you like that?" Harry asked, genuinely confused. He turned his head toward Malfoy's bunk. He was drunk enough that looking at Malfoy sideways was unpleasant, but getting off the floor seemed worse.

Malfoy looked him in the eye, his face had gotten serious. "Is that what you think of me?"

"Er… I don't want to make you mad. We're stuck together for a while."

"If you don't want to make me mad," Malfoy said, leaning forward precariously, "tell me the truth."

"Ok," Harry said nervously, "er, I can do that. I thought you liked pretentious stuff, yeah. Back when we were both at Hogwarts you talked a lot about money, and you always had nice stuff, and you made fun of Ron because his family doesn't have as much as yours. And you always wanted people to think you were better than we were. Um, didn't you?"

Malfoy sighed and looked slightly miserable. "Yeah," he agreed mopily. "I suppose that's all true."

Uncomfortable, Harry decided it was time to try to make Malfoy laugh. "But you know, the _main_ reason I think you're pretentious," he tried recklessly, "is because you like that horrible Merlot shit." He sat up just enough to take a last long swig and finish his Rosé. He gave an exaggerated grimace and dropped his skull back down to the floor. His wine wasn't very good either.

"What?" Malfoy sputtered, apparently trying not to laugh.

"Yeah," Harry said, sensing he might have put a foot right for once. He looked at Malfoy again. "That crap is awful, Malfoy. This stuff I bought is really bad, too, now that I think about it. Couldn't a train this fancy have decent a English lager?"

"It's a _French_ train!" Malfoy yelped, seeming to like the less serious turn of the conversation.

"Exactly my point!" Harry declared, fairly sure this made no sense. He tried to find a way it could. "The French were always trying to conquer England! It had to have been because they were completely sick of this horrid wine, and they wanted a good English lager!"

Looking horrified and titillated, Malfoy laughed out loud.

"I've never been to France before," Harry said in a conspiratorial tone. He rolled fully onto his side. "But my horrible Aunt never shut up about this place. She was always hinting that Uncle Vernon should take her to Paris for their anniversary, or angling for a fancy 'French Christmas.' To think, I'm probably the first one to get here. Wait, are we even still in France?"

Malfoy laughed out loud. "Your geography is appalling!"

"That's not my fault, Malfoy," Harry said defensively. "It isn't like Hogwarts taught geography!"

Malfoy laughed again, looking even less in control now. Harry stole Malfoy's wine bottle and drained it, then made a horrible face. That shit was foul. "Seriously," he said again. "When do we cross into Italy?"

"About sunrise, I'd guess," Malfoy said. "France is really big. We spend the whole night travelling through France. Didn't you look at the map in your ticket?"

"Why would I read something if I don't have to?" Harry asked cheekily, hoping Malfoy would laugh again. He grinned at Malfoy who laughed in surprise and then lay down on the floor next to Harry, his face by Harry's feet.

"Think I'm drunk," he said.

"Why are your feet in my face?" Harry reached out and grabbed one of Malfoy's feet. He thought Malfoy might jerk away from him, but instead, he stilled. Their shoes had been off since they'd returned with their bottles of wine.

"Because I figured you wouldn't want my _face_ in your face?" his voice sounded softer now that he was further away.

"Nah," Harry said recklessly. "That'd be better than your smelly socks!" Then, to show that he was a good sport, he tried to turn himself around, instead of just expecting Malfoy to do it.

"Oops!" Drunker than expected, he'd landed mostly on Malfoy, and getting up to hover over the other boy, he opened his eyes so he could seek out Malfoy's face to apologize to him. What he saw, though, surprised him. Malfoy didn't look angry, or like he was in pain. Malfoy wasn't laughing, either. Instead, his face was burning and Harry could see embarrassment and even shame seeping into the other boy's skin.

"Whassa matter?" he slurred; far more dizzy, suddenly, than he'd felt only minutes before. Maybe because he'd been moving so much. The carriage was trying to spin in a direction that made no sense, considering he was fairly sure train carriages should only ever go forwards and backwards. He looked at the window but saw only night: darkness, one light whizzing by. Then he looked down at Malfoy, who seemed to be trying to melt into the floor.

"I need," Malfoy said, sounding helpless. "Er, you…. Get off?" Then he closed his eyes and made a pathetic whimpering sound of deep embarrassment. He sounded positively agonized, but all Harry could discern from own his state of alcohol-induced stupidity was that he didn't understand what was going on.

"Nah," he said. "Not yet. Not till I understand!" His own voice was bizarrely cheerful and as he pondered this additional detail he lost his balance and fell fully onto Malfoy.

Malfoy had an erection. It felt like a chunk of burning steel: huge, obvious, unavoidable. "Whoa," Harry said, thoroughly distracted. Harry found cocks pretty fascinating, but he had essentially no experience with any other than his own. He'd looked, of course. He knew all the Gryffindor boys had. But to touch, to feel…. Experimentally, he rubbed his own crotch into Malfoy's. He'd never imagined rubbing cocks with anyone before. Honestly, he'd never thought about sex much at all before. When he'd thought about girls, his imaginings had never gone beyond kissing them. He'd assumed other, sexier fantasy would come later, when he wasn't so busy.

The next day, when he incessantly pondered how and why he could just automatically know to rub his own cock against Malfoy's erection, he would not quite be able to admit an answer to the question. Except he could, of course. Instinct. What could it be other than a deeply rooted, unexplored, long denied instinct? Because holy fucking Merlin, that felt _brilliant_.

"Oh fuck," Harry said, barely aware that he was speaking. "Can I?"

"Anything," Malfoy whispered, and Harry put his lips on Malfoy's neck and -licking and biting -- rubbed against Malfoy's crotch with his own until he was hard as a rock, and then until Malfoy came decisively and loudly, his legs snaked tightly around Harry's arse. Then he kept rubbing until his own orgasm exploded through him, a bullet train rushing through his spine and belly, right through his balls and entire dick.

"Whoa," he said, embarrassed.

Malfoy gave a mild whimper. Harry thought it made him sound like he was too sated to properly express uncertainty or embarrassment. Harry burned with embarrassment enough for the both of them, though, so that was sorted.

Face on fire, he charmed the mess from his pants and mumbled something about being exhausted.

"Okay," Malfoy said with a weary smile. He looked like he could fall asleep right there on the floor. Harry climbed into the top bunk of the tiny sleeper car and -- drunk and post-orgasmic -- fell asleep in seconds.

In the morning, Harry awakened early and slipped out of the car before Malfoy woke up. He "hid" in the café-bar, sitting there even before there was food for sale. Once they arrived in Milan they had to change trains, and Harry purchased an enormous British newspaper in the station and pretended to read it, or sleep, all the way to Lecce.

Hours and hours of pretending to be engrossed in the newspaper his damn Uncle Vernon preferred. Conservative Tory garbage. Harry had just grabbed the fattest English paper he saw. He was so discombobulated by the notsex he'd not had last night (and not with Malfoy!) that he'd managed to grab the fucking _Telegraph_.

It served him right, he decided after Malfoy actually fell asleep while Harry was ignoring him. He laid the paper down in his lap and looked out the window, seeing nothing. What sort of Gryffindor -- or auror for that matter -- would behave so dishonestly? Harry closed his eyes, folded his hands over the paper in his lap, and contemplated the nightmare he'd created.

They would be in Lecce fairly soon, and then he and Malfoy would have to sneak their bizarre little craft into the Mediterranean and spend a few days together trying to figure out what to expect from King Greynrushes and how to get him to do what they wanted. All alone in a tiny little submarine with nothing to distract them from one another.

Harry blushed at the thought and hoped no one on the train was looking at him. Especially not Malfoy, who -- thankfully -- was still acting like he was fast asleep.

What the hell had he been thinking, getting drunk with Malfoy? That mistake, first of _all_ last night's mistakes. They weren't friends! Harry squirmed in his chair as he considered that. Were they friends now? That would be weird. Sure, but this entire situation was weird, he realized again.

He rested his face against the cool window. The newspaper fell to the floor but he ignored it. He was pretending to be asleep, right?

He needed to make a list. On the "not my friend" side, well, that was easy. Six years of Hogwarts crap, the war, the mark he was still pretty sure Malfoy had once worn on his arm before Voldemort's death inconveniently erased them and the evidence they could have manifested for criminal prosecution. But did he have a single thing he could put on that list that had happened after Voldemort died and the war ended? He turned things over in his mind. He'd received some owls from Dean, Ginny and Hermione, also at Hogwarts this year. They hadn't mentioned Malfoy at all. Flitwick hadn't seemed bothered by Malfoy when he'd brought Harry to the Head's office, and speaking of McGonagall, she'd been positively insistent that the two of them solve Hogwarts' Snape problem for her, together, in a tiny tent.

So no, he realized, curling closer to the window and wishing he had a pillow, everything on that side of the list was from at least May 1 or before, the day Snape died and the war ended.

And since then? In the time they had spent together, how had Malfoy behaved? He had shown Harry how to split the chocolate, Harry recalled, without a snide comment or a word about the Weasleys. Even though Harry had left himself wide open for snark when he'd mentioned he only knew how to divide the bar into a lot of pieces. He'd complimented Harry to the Merchieftainess. He'd given Harry the opportunity to shine there. He'd helped Harry hear Snape's venom and then -- frankly -- apologized for it. Even though he held no responsibility for it.

Then he'd gotten drunk with Harry, laughed at Harry's jokes, tried to hide his attraction and responded with overwhelming enthusiasm when Harry had asked for permission to….

He blushed into the window.

It was a pity he'd gotten quite used to going out drinking with the boys after work, because only a few months ago an entire bottle of wine would have put him well into black-out territory, but this morning he remembered every damn minute of the -- call it sex, it was basically sex -- he'd had with Malfoy the night before.

So, Malfoy was acting like a friend, and Harry? What was Harry acting like? A poofter. When the hell had he become a pervert? He'd loved Ginny. He'd wanted Cho. Those things he was sure of. Of course, he'd never tried to do more than kiss Ginny, even when she'd dropped little hints that she was open to a bit more. He'd told himself that he respected her too much to take off her top, and what if Molly or Arthur found out? But he knew that Ron respected Hermione more than anyone on earth and had been trying to get Hermione's shirt off for a few years now. And succeeding for a while, too.

So. Maybe he was queer. He swallowed at the thought. That was scary.

How could a poof have had two girlfriends, though?

Two skinny, flat-chested, Quidditch-genius, bold as brass, outspoken, war-hero, girlfriends. But girlfriends! With long hair!

Malfoy's hair was pretty long, actually. Harry had completely ignored it the night before, in favour of **_cocks_** and coming as fast as he could. But he took a moment to imagine touching Malfoy's shoulder-length hair. Immediately, he felt his dick begin to harden and his face begin to flush -- first with excitement, then with embarrassment. He wished he still had the paper on his lap. That was all Tory papers were good for, really. Hiding perverted erections.

He sniggered into the window, completely giving away that he was awake, were Malfoy awake to see or hear the noise. But he wasn't ready to talk to Malfoy so he pretended he'd been silent and hoped Malfoy -- who wasn't moving or making noise, so maybe it was true -- was still honestly asleep.

He had to face facts. He didn't date anymore. He sucked at his job. He got drunk a lot and he was probably gay. Possibly bisexual, but definitely attracted to Malfoy. His dick got a little harder and his eyes snapped open. This was intolerable. He leaned over, picked up the paper off the floor, turned to put it on his chair as he stood and then shuffled out of the seat into the aisle, wishing he was wearing concealing wizard robes because his erection wasn't getting bigger anymore but it wasn't going away, either.

He strode to the nearest washroom, locked himself in, silenced the door and brought himself off as swiftly as possible, panting as he remembered grinding his dick into Malfoy's burning erection and his mouth into Malfoy's slightly bristly neck. He thought about being alone in a tent at the bottom of the Mediterranean with Malfoy's skin, his hair, his dick.

He came. Oh Merlin, he _came_.

Chapter 7

They ignored each other all the way to Lecce, mostly by trading off "eating" in the café-bar. They spoke only of logistics as they collected their luggage, took a taxi to a tiny, half-deserted hotel on the shore, and disillusioned themselves and all their stuff when they'd finally managed to feel alone.

In ten minutes they were dry again, completely underwater and chugging slowly toward Greece.

The silence felt like it was choking him, and Harry decided that he was supposed to be a fucking Gryffindor and opened his mouth abruptly.

"We should talk," he said, as Malfoy made almost exactly the same decision, saying simultaneously, and oddly loudly: "Want a blow job?"

Harry stared at Draco, who was blushing fiercely but not looking away from Harry's face.

"Did you just offer to suck my…" said dick was almost fully erect, apparently eager to say 'yes' if Harry's mouth found itself incapable.

"What, er, did you want to talk about?" Malfoy said instead.

"I want to talk," Harry said, barely thinking, "about the way you're sucking my cock." He reached for his waistband to get his Muggle clothing out of the way, searching Malfoy's face for an answer. Malfoy nodded slowly, looking almost like he was in a trance, and he slid out of his captain's chair onto the tiny sliver of floor between them. Harry's rushed his cock out of his clothes, not caring about the metal teeth of the zipper.

Staring at Harry's erection, Malfoy reached for it, stroked it once, then took the head into his mouth.

By some miracle, Harry didn't come immediately, even though no one else had ever had their mouth on his cock before.

"Thought you wanted to talk?" Malfoy said, his face burning red and his eyes glinting fiercely. He took the head of Harry's cock into his mouth again and sucked on it slowly.

"Er," Harry said, "right." He pushed himself closer to Malfoy, who backed off, then put a hand around the base of Harry's dick and put his mouth back on the head.

"Oh fuck, Malfoy," Harry said, panting. "Good." He breathed loudly for a moment. Malfoy stopped sucking and looked at him. "Right," Harry said again, and tried to think of more to say. "Your hand," he tried. "Grip me harder and, oohhhhh..." he moaned, when Malfoy obeyed instantly. "Er, move your hand. Yeah," he panted again. "Just like that. Damn. That's good. Are you…" he leaned over, wanting to put his hands into Malfoy's hair and not knowing if that was a good idea. "Will you swallow?"

Malfoy sucked the end of Harry's dick hard, his now quite wet hand moving fast over Harry's cock. He let go with his mouth, making up for it by jerking off the whole thing with his hand. "Do you want me to?"

"Fuck yes," Harry said without hesitation. "Please."

"Then yes," Malfoy said, his cheeks flaring red again. He took Harry's cock back into his mouth and returned his attention to sucking out every ounce of Harry's concentration, thought and judgment.

"Wanna touch your hair," Harry said, having yet again lost any ability to filter his words.

Malfoy reached into his own hair and pulled out the cord that kept it neatly pulled back. Harry groaned in lust. He put first his left, then his right hand as well, into Malfoy's pretty hair.

"Talk," Malfoy said quickly, then sucked again.

"Your hair is really soft," Harry said swiftly, and was rewarded with an extra twist of Malfoy's hand.

"Oh yeah," Harry said. "That twist, do that twist again. Please."

Malfoy did and Harry couldn't help but thrust his cock into Malfoy's mouth and hand in involuntary response.

A terrible, amazing thought entered Harry's mind. Draco had an arsehole. He wanted to fuck it. It was probably tight and hot, and it was hidden between Malfoy's long elegant legs, inside the curves of Malfoy's tight, round, high arsecheeks. Which apparently some covert piece of Harry's brain had been noticing for a while.

"Talk," Malfoy said again, and Harry tried not to tell Malfoy what he really wanted.

"Want to fuck you," he said helplessly. "Fuck your mouth," he lied, and sighed at that, because holy fuck, that sounded really fantastic too. He tried to go with it. "Want to fuck your pretty mouth, into your throat, so tight. Wet. Want to grab your head and fuck your mouth really hard."

Harry was inches from coming so hard he thought his dick was likely to explode with it, and he didn't think he cared if it did. It would be worth it.

"Want to hold your head with my hands, and feel your soft hair, and stand up, and pull you up with me, and fuck your mouth so hard. Like a hole, like an arse, like a tight, wet hole that sucks in my dick and takes my come." Harry panted and slowed down Malfoy's hand. "Gonna come soon," he managed. "Still want to swallow?"

Malfoy's eyes widened, and he nodded as best he could with Harry's dick filling his mouth.

"Next time," Harry couldn't help saying, "wanna bend you over, open up your arse, oh hell, so good, wanna fuck, fuck…."

He couldn't speak anymore, and Malfoy was pulling at him, kneeling up far higher, pulling Harry to a standing position, keeping a hand wrapped firmly around Harry's cock to keep from getting his throat filled but still, it was the rest of what Harry had said and he fucked enthusiastically away at Malfoy's pretty red mouth and gripping fist and came and came a gallon of come so hot and deep that his balls were going to be empty for days.

"Merlin's tits," Harry said, and desperately wished he were horizontal. Then he looked down to check on Malfoy. Malfoy, who had a softening cock in each hand. Malfoy, who had been jerking off. Malfoy had been masturbating. _Masturbating_. While sucking Harry's cock. Harry's cock tried to fill again at the realization. He pulled at Malfoy's shoulders. Malfoy stood up awkwardly in the tiny space and cast a breath-freshening charm on himself as he rose.

"You were jerking off?" Harry said, amazed.

"You have a nice cock," Malfoy said lamely, not looking anywhere near Harry's eyes. Malfoy's face was bright red again.

"I guess I do," Harry said smugly.

"Do you really want to fuck me?" Malfoy said quietly. Now he was looking at the floor.

"Er," Harry faltered. What had seemed so obvious when he was having sex suddenly seemed embarrassing and wrong. And yet… it wasn't exactly an avenue he wanted to cut off forever. "Sure. What bloke doesn't enjoy fucking a nice tight hole, right?" He grimaced. That was asinine, and now Malfoy would know he was a real queer; not just willing to accept blow jobs from willing boys. Malfoy didn't smirk at him though. Instead he looked a bit downcast.

"Oh," he said. "Sure. What bloke."

Now Harry felt awful. How did he fix this? "Hey," he tried. "That was fucking brilliant, Malfoy. My first blow job. I loved it." He put a hand on Malfoy's face, amazed at the heat of it. Impulsively, he leaned forward just enough to press a small kiss to the corner of Malfoy's mouth. He blushed at the wanting that arose suddenly in his gut.

"I'm not gay, though," he blurted without thinking. "I mean, I'm… I might be bi?" He cringed again. He could see he was hurting Malfoy's feelings. It was written all over the other boy's face. But he wasn't gay! Surely he wasn't gay. Was he? He couldn't be gay if he didn't want to be gay! The hate-filled things Uncle Vernon used to say had always made it seem….

"I'm going to go lie down," Malfoy said in a tiny voice. He turned away from Harry, and Harry let him walk away, wondering what he was supposed to do now, since he absolutely wasn't gay, except that he'd just come in Malfoy's mouth.

First thing, he realized, was probably to check the tent's rumbling movement forward, since no one was driving. He sat in the driver's seat and looked through the front window. It was clear for as far ahead as he could see. The spells and view screens indicated that they should be able to move ahead on autopilot for quite a while, and if he was going to go back there and tell Malfoy… something, then they wouldn't have to slow down their trip in order to have that conversation.

Except.

Except he didn't think he should switch to autopilot. He'd be distracted. Worried that the spells had missed something. Anxious to get back to the view screen and the steering wheel and make sure nothing weird was happening. He sighed. He wanted to get this trip over with. He wanted to save Hogwarts _now_ and be done with that arsehole wraith and know that this mess was cleaned up. But he didn't want to neglect Malfoy to hurry things up. That felt wrong.

So, Harry parked the tent and made his way back to the cot in the back that Malfoy had taken that first night in the Black Lake.

"Hey," he said, sitting on the edge of the narrow mattress.

"Don't bother with me," Malfoy said to the wall, he eyes closed. "The tent will crash and then where will we be? Autopilot isn't safe."

"That's why I turned it off and parked the thing," Harry said grimly. "I need to, er." He swallowed, hoping his fear went with it. "I think I need to… well, not be worrying about the tent right now."

Malfoy rolled away from the wall and opened his eyes without lifting his head. He wasn't looking any higher than the hand Harry had rested on the mattress near Malfoy's chest. "You did?" he said, sounded hopeful, sad and restrained.

"Yeah," Harry said quietly. "I didn't want to be thinking about that when I needed to be saying, well, I should be thinking about you. You did something… that was a really nice thing you did, Malfoy. I wasn't very nice about it." He blushed. This wasn't going well, but he was trying. He hoped that was worth something. "I shouldn't have said that stuff about being gay or bi or whatever. I shouldn't have been, er…"

"Embarrassed," Malfoy said. "You were embarrassed. Because it was me."

"No, Harry said, sighing, looking at the mattress, tracing a little circle with his finger and not looking at Malfoy. "Because you're a bloke. I've never thought I might be gay until I fell on you and wanted to come." He felt himself blush even though Malfoy wasn't looking at him.

Malfoy lifted his head now to look at Harry. "You… really? I've known I was gay for…. Let's just say a few years now. Haven't you been dating lots of girls?"

"Er, no." Harry said, looking above Malfoy's head. "I've mostly been sucking at my job and going out drinking with the boys after work. I haven't had a girlfriend since I broke up with Ginny Weasley at the end of sixth year."

"Really?" Malfoy said, and the surprise in his voice was more than genuine. "I thought… the newspapers…."

"Oh Merlin, Malfoy," Harry laughed grimly. "You believe Rita Skeeter's bullshit? You used to _supply_ her with bullshit!" He laughed again, and this time Malfoy joined in, and they laughed together for a few moments. Until Malfoy said "now, now, this is what got us into trouble last night!" Malfoy's laughter sounded forced and uncomfortable, and Harry couldn't help but correct him.

"No," he said slowly. "What got us into trouble last night, was this," and he reached over and stroked Malfoy's cock right through his clothing.

Malfoy looked up at Harry, shocked. But he moved when he did, and now Harry found it even easier to reach Malfoy's growing dick. He continued to rub at it lightly with one finger.

"Whatever I am, and however freaked out I might be, I have to admit… I'm interested." He reached over to Malfoy's jaw with his right hand, leaving his left busy with Malfoy's cock. "Can I… lie down?"

Malfoy nodded and scooted back so fast that something banged loudly against the wall, but Harry just lay down next to him and kissed him again. This time Malfoy's mouth opened, and Harry let Malfoy tease the edge of his lips with his tongue.

Then he opened his mouth and let Malfoy in. His hands went to Malfoy's arse and they squirmed and moved until they were cock to cock and kissing in earnest.

"It's only been five minutes, can you come again?" Harry found he cared desperately to know the answer.

"I… yeah," Malfoy said.

"Get your kit off?" Harry said, blushing fiercely.

"Okay," Malfoy said quietly, and they both began to strip, fast. Soon they were naked together, hard and kissing on the tiny cot, using the narrowness as an excuse to glue themselves to one another.

"Fuck me?" Malfoy whispered into Harry's neck.

"Er…. Yeah?" Harry said, and then felt the need to confess his virginity. "I've never…."

"With a boy?"

"With anyone," Harry said, and hid his face in Malfoy's neck.

"That's so fucking hot," Malfoy whispered, into Harry's neck, both their faces burning with desire, embarrassment and need.

"Really?" Harry said, astonished. "Have you?"

"Only a couple blow jobs," Malfoy admitted quietly. "Nothing else."

Heat flared in Harry's chest and belly, and he had to agree: "You're right. That is hot. But neither of us knows what to do. What if I hurt you?"

"You mean," Malfoy said, so quiet Harry almost couldn't hear him over his own pounding heart, "you don't want to hurt me?"

"Fucking hell, Malfoy," Harry said, horrified. He pulled his face away so they could look each other in the eye. "What do you think I _am_?"

"Someone who only ever calls me Malfoy," Malfoy said, miserable. His eyes were suddenly wet. "Even when I told you I don't like that name."

"You want me to call you, er, Draco?"

Malfoy nodded his yes as Harry realized it _was_ hard to call the other boy Draco. But he reckoned he could, if he had a good reason. This seemed like a really good reason.

"Okay, Draco, I can do that." They smiled tentatively at each other. "May I fuck you, Draco?"

Malfoy's eyes widened comically, and Harry giggled. Draco giggled back. "That sounded really off," Malfoy said, "but Merlin, yes. I want that. I want that a _lot_."

"So how do we make sure I don't hurt you? Because I want this too. A lot."

"I think," Draco paused. "I think go slow. And probably use a lot of lube. I assume we'll have to conjure that, but I think that will be good enough."

"Good, okay. Right." Harry fetched his wand off the floor and conjured a fistful of lube. "Now what?"

Draco's eyes widened and focused on Harry's hand. "I think you stretch me." He lay on his back and encouraged Harry to cuddle close, then he lifted his right leg and rested it on the wall.

Gulping, Harry reached over with his left hand and tried to find Draco's… his mind skittered away from the word like a cockroach away from light.

Then he found the spot he was looking for, under Draco's balls. He pushed a wet finger there, and Draco sighed happily. Encouraged, Harry circled it and kissed Draco's mouth. He realized he could probably kiss Draco a lot and still push a wet finger in, so he tried it, and it worked perfectly. They kissed and touched, getting hard again, dripping some pre-come on each other, and at Draco's request, Harry pushed a second finger in, and then a third.

"Okay," Draco finally said, and pushed Harry onto his back. "Now I climb on and," he paused, rearranging them both a bit. His arse was hovering over Harry's erection now, and Harry stared intently at the future.

"Lube up your cock with what's left," Draco instructed, and once Harry had, Draco slowly worked his insanely tight arsehole down over Harry's screaming hard dick.

"Holy shit fuck," Harry wailed. "Oh Jesus Merlin yessssss…."

"That good, huh?" Draco said, grimacing, as he finally settled himself all the way down onto Harry's pelvis.

"Ungh," Harry groaned, unable to articulate how desperately he wanted to drill into Draco like a woodpecker.

"Well, it will take me a bit longer to get used to this, so be patient."

In response, Harry gripped the sheets into his fists and nodded at Draco, who rolled his eyes, but raised his hips slightly, then a bit more, then lowered himself again. "That's a bit better," Draco said, sounding happy, and he did it again.

"Ungh," Harry groaned again. The feeling was unlike anything he'd ever experienced before, like being deliciously smothered with hot, tight, honey. He never wanted it to stop, except that he was already desperate to come again, even though he'd exploded in Draco's mouth only half an hour or so before.

"Mmmm," Draco said, grinning fervently, going faster now, and clearly enjoying himself on Harry's cock. That was an intense, brilliant thought. There was an actual _person_ , an entire whole live human being, deliberately spearing his own arse with Harry's cock, because _he really, really wanted to._

"How do I help you come," Harry panted. He wanted to come too, and knew he should wait for Draco. But he also just… _wanted that_. He wanted Draco to come because Harry's cock felt good in him. He wanted to be the reason Draco got hard, and the reason Draco came. He wanted to be fantastically, ridiculously good at this.

"Kiss me?" Draco said, blushing, but they moved their heads together and Harry kissed Draco for all he was worth.

"I love this," he whispered when they broke apart for a moment. It hurt Harry's neck to make the kissing work in this position, but it was so clearly worth it that Harry didn't care. "I really fucking love sex," he smiled. "I love kissing you, too. Merlin, this is seriously brill, this sex stuff. I can hardly believe I've waited all this time to try it."

Draco bounced experimentally on Harry's cock, smiling down at him. "Maybe you were just waiting for me," he teased, and then he turned scarlet all the way down his chest.

"No scars," Harry said, suddenly thinking of more than the moment they were in.

"Dittany." Draco said, serious. "Snape."

"I'm so fucking sorry." Harry said, astonished that he'd never really said any such thing until he was balls deep into the other boy.

"Then wrap a hand around my cock and jerk me off while I ride your dick," Draco said coyly, blushing and smirking and rolling his eyes a bit again. Clearly, he'd dealt with the past already, better than Harry had, for certain.

Harry just obeyed, wrapping one hand around Draco's erection and grabbing Draco's sexy arse cheek with the other. "Merlin's _balls_ I want you to come," Harry said, looking at Draco's dick in his hand, trying to jerk off the one who was now sliding up and down on his cock even faster.

"Then grab my arse really tight and say something nice to me," Draco said quietly, and he closed his eyes and concentrated, fucking himself on Harry's cock, his balls slapping down with every push.

Squeezing that perfect round muscle in his left hand, Harry let a stream of consciousness loose. "You feel fantastic riding my dick," he began. "And fuck, you look really hot, too. This makes me want to come. I loved fucking your mouth but this might be better, and your arse feels good in my hand. You're really gorgeous. I love your hair, too. I noticed it right away in her office, I didn't expect to see you, and I was surprised, and I saw your hair, and I wanted to touch it, and that made me mad. And now, I want to touch it, and you're fucking away on my dick like I feel good, like I'm making _you_ feel good, and that's so fucking awesome, because you feel really fucking good too. And if you don't come soon, hell, I'm going to come before you do and that would suck because I really want your come all over me, you know? I want to watch you come, I want to watch that happen and know, oh fuck yeah, keep doing that, know that my dick feels _that good_ to you, so I'm just going to stay hard as long as I can and tell you how hot you are, and how pretty your hair is, and how good your arse feels, and how fucking fantastic it feels to have you wrapping your arse around my cock, and please, Draco, please come. I want to watch you come?"

"Yes," Draco finally hissed, and his eyes opened. "Can't hold back any longer…." Viscous white come started to spurt from Draco's cock, and he moaned softly as he came. "Oh!" he said, "Oh, oh! Oh!"

Harry wanted to roll him over and slam into his arse hard, but they didn't have time for that. When Draco's cock stopped spurting, Harry pulled at Draco's thighs and -- not caring that this meant one of Draco's knees was no longer on the narrow mattress, he fucked up into Draco's tight hole five, maybe ten times, and then he was coming again, the fourth time in less than a day, coming harder and more intensely than he ever managed at home alone in bed or the shower.

"Jesus," he said quietly, and -- as Draco eased himself off Harry's cock and moved to rest next to him -- Harry ran his fingers through the enthusiastic mess Draco had left on his belly. Harry moved his left arm, encouraging Draco to cuddle close next to him, and Draco ran his fingers through his own come as well. Silent, the two lay close, looking down at their bodies. Covered with sweat and come, wrapped together, they looked like a couple.

"I think I'm gay," Harry said, feeling shocked.

Draco giggled at him.

"Shut it, you," Harry said, both hurt and amused. He was being ridiculous. But still.

"Sorry," Draco said, and cuddled closer. Harry pulled him in.

"We need to get moving," Harry sighed. "We won't both fit in that shower. I can drive for a bit while you get cleaned up if you'll take over for me as soon as you can? I really want to get this stupid mission over with."

"Just the mission?" Draco said.

"I feel awful now that I understand how much the people at Hogwarts are really suffering," Harry said, turning to Draco. "I'm glad we were able to get to the Mediterranean faster, but McGonagall thought we were going to find the ring in the Black Lake, which means the wraith would have been gone a few days ago already. She didn't say anything about trips to hospital in the letter she sent Robards." 

Harry sighed. "I just figured out I'm gay, Draco. I don't know if I can handle much more than sex. But I don't want to use you. I'm supposed to be a good guy, right? So why don't we stop fucking, get to King Greynrushes castle or whatever, and solve this problem, pronto, huh? And then we can worry about what comes next later, okay? I… I'm kind of freaking out here. Just a little."

Draco pulled his face back enough to look Harry in the eye. He said nothing, just looked into Harry's eyes and thought, or something. If he was using Legilimency Harry couldn't feel it. "Okay," Draco finally said, and got up from the little bed. "I'll shower and dress," he said. And he stepped into the tiny bathroom and closed the door.

Sighing, Harry cleaned the come off his belly, got up and cleaned it off the sheets as well. Then -- not feeling clean enough to dress -- he conjured a flimsy towel, put it down on the captain's chair, sat down and turned the engine back on. As far as he could tell, they should make it to the castle by morning, if they drove through the night. The Mediterranean got a lot more light than the Black Lake, and especially more than the trench they had followed to the ocean. It was easier to tell day from night here than anywhere else they had been under water. But the submarine tent had good headlights, so Harry felt they could drive all night here, as well.

When Draco returned, smirking at Harry's nudity, Harry tried to smirk back with assurance, but was pretty sure his blush gave away his lack of true self-confidence. He showered quickly and dressed even more quickly. The boys agreed to take turns napping and driving to speed up the journey, and Harry fell asleep quickly in his own tiny bunk, still dressed.

Draco woke him in the morning when they arrived near enough the castle to see it.

This time they managed to get out of the submarine tent without making much of a mess inside it at all. They took the ugly ring, the copied map, and a short note that Merchieftainess Murcus had written up as introduction and request. Taking deep breaths and reaching out to hold one another's hands without really thinking it through beforehand, they began the walk to the front gate of the castle.

The King's guard weren't willing to let them into the King's throne room, and -- after handing over the note from Merchieftainess Murcus -- they were deposited in a small room just inside the outer wall of the castle. It was filled with fish bone statues and shark tooth jewelry and had no windows. The whole castle was topped with something thick and solid, clear enough to let in light, but a lid that kept everything inside in, and outside, out. Feeling trapped, they waited, still holding hands. It felt less nerve-wracking in that room to hold another's hand.

Soon the King swam in, followed by a small phalanx of armed guards and three giggling mermaids wearing a great deal of jewelry. 

Taking note of everyone's position, Harry let go of Draco's hand, nodded at him, and moved a few feet closer to the door.

Although incredibly tall as well, Greynrushes and his coterie looked almost nothing like the merpeople of the Black Lake. Harry was shocked at how familiar one of the mermaids looked. He stared at her, unabashed, finally realizing she could have been the model for the mermaid whose painting hung in the prefect's bathroom back home.

"I don't like queers!" the seven or eight foot tall King boomed. It came through the translation and bubble-head charms as particularly threatening, or perhaps that was all the spears.

Completely taken aback, Harry knew his shock was written all over his face. He had no idea what to say. Luckily, Draco had some ideas.

"Queer or no," he said in a confident voice, "we come at the suggestion of Merchieftainess Murcus and at the express instruction of the headmistress of Hogwarts. You possess an object that is required in order to free Hogwarts of a terrible curse, and we have brought a fancier, pretty, more valuable object to trade for it. May I show it to you?"

The King gave the two of them a condescending smile. "Of course you 'may,' little human."

Draco took the ring from his pocket, and -- uncertain if it was wiser to do this or to trust -- Harry cast a protection charm over it surreptitiously. Draco might have noticed and hid his reaction, but -- perhaps as they were non magic users, neither the King nor any of his guard seemed to notice Harry's magic at all. Encouraged, Harry cast another spell on the ring before it left Draco's hand. He thought for sure this time the coloured light traveling from his hand to the ring would gain someone's attention, but no one said anything, and he tried to relax.

The King gestured, and the closest guard took the ring from Draco's hand and gave it to the King, who looked at it with an obviously feigned disdain. Harry could see the greed in his eyes, putting him more on guard. He pressed his wand against his side, keeping it secure in the slender holster hidden in his sleeve. He wished Draco had a holster too, and watched the King.

"Why should I give you the other ring at all?" King Greynrushes said. "My wife likes it." He turned to look at the mermaids. "Don't you?"

He seemed to be looking at the one on the left, but it was the one on the right who answered. "May I see the replacement?" she giggled, and Harry smiled. Unlike the King, she didn't seem interested in stealing.

As she looked at the ring he and Draco had brought all the way from Hogwarts, Harry saw the other ring on her finger. She was lovely and the two moonstones looked beautiful underwater, but Harry wanted to get the hell out of here, and soon. The atmosphere was nerve-wracking. He didn't like the looks the guards were giving each other, or the way two of them were blocking the doorway.

An idea came to him and he tried to remember the proper wand movements.

"Guard," King Greynrushes said, almost lazily. "Bind the prisoners."

Three of the guards moved to flank Harry and Draco, but Harry was already prepared. He stunned the two closest to him, then -- using a spell he'd learned from his grizzled, experienced auror partner, he bound all the rest of the merpeople to the King.

"Accio ring," Draco said, catching on, and the one that was merely held, the replacement that Harry had charmed to return easily, nearly flew from the fingers of the King's pretty young wife. Frustrated, Harry darted forward into the mess of furious merpeople and snatched the ring they needed from the finger of the mermaid. "I'm sorry," he whispered, and she looked into his eyes in terror, but he did not dare release her.

Dropping the replacement ring they had brought from Hogwarts, Draco grabbed Harry's arm, and without a word of explanation, Harry side alonged them directly into the submarine tent, splattering water and mud all over the inside. "We have to get out of here _now,_ he said as he shoved the ring into a pocket, and -- turning the craft around in place even before he sat down in the captain's chair -- he steered it away from the rocks near the edge of the castle walls and put it into its highest gear. "I think…" he said, and tried something they'd never bothered with before, worrying that it was dangerous.

"Are you sure that's safe?" Draco said, sounding grim, and Harry didn't answer as he lifted the craft off the seabed and encouraged it to go faster still.

"Safer than sticking around," Harry said nervously, and they drove the craft in silence at tremendous speed for twenty minutes until the engine began to whine horribly.

"I still don't see anyone behind us," Draco said as Harry steered around a school of fish. "Good," Harry said, slowing the craft. "Because that engine noise sounds terrible."

"Still," Draco said slowly, "I think we can go faster than we were yesterday." He swallowed, and Harry watched his Adam's apple bob.

"Yeah," Harry said quietly, looking at the controls again. "I think it should be safe to go at three quarters speed, but swimming, not driving on the seabed. Is that what you meant?"

"Yes," Draco said, relieved. "I should probably nap now, but frankly, I'm far, far too wired up and jittery. Do you mind if I keep you company for a while?"

"I'd be glad of it, honestly," Harry said and grinned at him. Impulsively he reached over and squeezed Draco's hand, then took the steering wheel in both hands again. "I'd really like you looking behind us for a few more, er…."

"Hours?" Draco joked grimly, and they both laughed their nervousness.

"That was fucking scary," Draco finally said after a few long minutes of quiet driving at a much slower speed than they'd started with. "How the hell do you do that shit every day at work?"

"Well," Harry said, and tried to take the question seriously. "I like parts of being an auror. I like solving problems like that. I like giving people the benefit of the doubt until I see that they are going to fuck with me, and then fucking with them instead." He grinned at Draco who grinned back, looking slightly amazed and horrified at the same time.

"I hate following stupid rules, though. And I have to admit, I'm not always good at telling stupid rules from good ones. I hate paperwork. I can hardly tell you what a relief it is to know that I don't have to sit down and write up what just happened back there, in fucking triplicate, no less.

"But what we just did? Fuck, that's the best bit! This whole adventure, really, it's been more good than bad. And the parts I couldn't handle? You were great. We made a good team."

"Hm," Draco said, and they drove in silence for a long stretch, just admiring the fish and looking for angry, armed merpeople. They didn't see any, and eventually Harry couldn't resist asking Draco something he'd been wondering for hours.

"Er, Draco?"

"Yeah?" Draco said sleepily. He should be napping now, Harry realized, so that they could drive night and day nonstop until they got to Lecce again. But perhaps his sleepiness was an advantage. Harry suspected Draco wasn't going to be crazy about this question. "How long have you fancied me?" Harry said quietly.

"Ridiculous." Draco dismissed. "What makes you think I fancy you?" Draco said it all so coolly, but he was blushing bright pink through his embarrassed smile.

"You should go nap," Harry said, feeling smug as hell. "It's been nearly two hours. I don't think they have the ability to catch up anymore."

"All right," Draco said, and rushed back to his bunk without saying another word.

"Heh," Harry said, and, taking his hands from the wheel, he put his hands behind his head and stretched out his chest for a few long, pleasant moments. Draco _totally_ fancied him.

Chapter 8

Harry's adrenaline carried him nearly the whole journey to Lecce. When Draco woke -- many hours after their escape -- he found Harry humming to himself and zipping past schools of fish.

"I could drive?" he suggested, but Harry begged off.

"I'd really rather drive still, if you wouldn't mind too much." Harry turned to look at Draco, but he couldn't discern what the look on the other boy's face meant. "You could, er, join me though? I'd be glad of the company."

At that, Draco gave Harry a smile and sat in the navigator's seat. "Happy to," he said simply, and helped Harry see that they were a few feet off track and it was getting worse.

"Glad you woke up," Harry said, and it was not long afterwards that they found themselves climbing out of the Mediterranean approximately an hour before dawn on a deserted beach. Magic made quick work of drying them off, and when they realized they had quite a few hours until their Muggle train left, magic made quick work of finding a tiny wizarding inn where they could stash their increasingly heavy (or so it felt) luggage, get some food, and learn about fun things to do from sunrise until evening, when their train left the station. They could even Floo from the inn to the station, though they were warned sternly not to be seen by Muggles and sadly told that no, the Inn's ancient, wheezing Floo couldn't get them even to Milan, let alone London.

They meandered around town, looking at churches until Harry was sick of them. Then they _Apparated_ to Spiaggia Porto Selvaggio, enjoying the ocean breeze and watching bathers crowded onto the tiny beach.

Some of the bathers were men in tiny, sexy little swimming trunks, holding hands with other men. Harry couldn't tell if Draco noticed them or not, but he did, and he felt his brain try to run away from everything the men implied about _him_.

Swallowing, he suggested they try the Museo Faggiano Lecce, and they did.

They ate at the wizarding inn, both breakfast and lunch, but dinner they decided to have on the train. They were eager to get the ring back to Hogwarts, and while nothing they did would actually make the train leave Lecce or arrive in London sooner, somehow it felt like at least this way they wouldn't be slowing anything down.

When the train finally pulled away from the station they were both vibrating a little.

"You have the ring?" Draco asked.

Harry looked around but he couldn't tell if Muggles might be listening. He cast _Muffliato_. "Right here in my pocket, see?"

"Yes. Good."

Harry's discomfort was making him jumpy. "And you checked all the shrunken stuff, right? We'll return everything to McGonagall just the way she gave it to us, right?"

"Right. Yes. I have the tickets right here. Shows we checked luggage. See? Two pieces for me, two pieces for you."

"Right, right. That's brill. Okay." They sat for a few long heartbeats, trying to relax.

"You nervous?" Draco asked after few moments.

"No!" Harry spluttered, astonished that Draco would ask. Then he thought about the question a little more. "Not… well, maybe. I can't see what I would have to be nervous about. It's just a train ride. We'll be traveling for ages. We won't even be in London until this time tomorrow, nearly. And then we have to get ourselves to a Floo and hope McGonagall left her Floo open."

"I know all that," Draco said with a forced calm, "but when we finally get there, bring the ring to McGonagall, what the hell do we do next?"

"Oh," Harry said.

"Yes," Draco agreed. "Oh."

"I figured McGonagall would have that part taken care of," Harry said, not feeling sure of this at all.

"Well, I suppose she might," Draco said, also unconvincing. "It would be exciting though," he said wistfully, folding his ticket papers into a tight accordion, "if we could solve it ourselves."

"Maybe we could," Harry said, feeling glad that Draco had suggested it, and made it about both of them. "We've been a good team through this whole mess. I think so, anyway. Er, do you?"

"I do, actually," Draco said, and he turned his head and gave Harry a genuine smile. Harry felt his heart skip a beat, and smiled back, feeling goofy.

"I'm a crap auror," Harry suddenly blurted out.

"You've rather suggested that before," Draco said, tentatively, "but I don't really know what you meant by it."

Harry sighed, deciding to let Draco hear it all. "I hate paperwork, I hate following rules I don't like, and I don't really like having to pretend people are innocent when I am absolutely certain they are guilty." Harry said, grumpily. "They let me, Ron and Neville start up as aurors right away, almost no training. The only way they bothered to admit that fighting the war might not have been truly adequate prep for the job is that -- after zipping through drilling us in the bare basics -- they gave all of us really _old_ , senior partners." Harry sighed. "My partner is great, don't get me wrong. He's really experienced and he doesn't treat me like a kid even when he probably should." He paused.

"What's his name?" Draco asked.

"Oh," Harry said. "Newland Searcy. I assume you don't know him? I think he's a pureblood, actually, so maybe you do?"

But Draco shook his head no.

"Well, he's a good man. He's a good auror, too. He even goes out drinking with us sometimes, tells us stories about shit that's gone down. Stuff he and the others have done."

Harry sighed and Draco looked at him quizzically. "That all sounds pretty good. What's the matter?"

"I guess the matter is that… sometimes it seems like going out drinking with mates and hearing the stories… is the best part of the job." Staring at the window, seeing nothing, Harry thought about that for a moment. It didn't feel quite true.

"No. I take that back. Sometimes it seems like that's the _only_ good part of the job." He frowned into his lap. "I like solving problems, but at work I hardly ever seem to solve problems. Worse, I'm often making problems. My instinct is to run in, to jump to conclusions, to save people. I'm always thinking I know what's best."

"And you're wrong?" Draco asked, looking surprised.

"Well," Harry said, and gave Draco a crooked smile. "I guess it depends how you want to define 'wrong.' I've saved a lot of lives, but my supervisor tells me that I could have saved pretty much every one of those lives without simultaneously ruining evidence, giving away stealth operations, breaking laws, knocking over colleagues, and risking my own skin. It seems like I'm forever on probation. Always getting yelled at. Forever on the verge of getting demoted somehow.

"I jump between feeling like I'm a shit auror, and feeling like well, if these regulations were so damn important, why did you have me just memorize the basics and skip all those classes you used to require?"

Harry stared out the window. He felt a deep need to admit something terrible, but unable to do it while looking at Draco at all. "I fear that I'll never be better than a junior auror;" he whispered to the glass and the incomprehensibly rushing countryside. "And at the same time, I go to sleep almost every night at least a bit drunk, and wishing I wasn't an auror at all."

Harry felt heat expand uncomfortably on his cheeks, hardly believing he'd confessed such things to Draco. He'd not said half this stuff out loud to Ron! Of course, he knew Ron already knew all of it. He was there right next to Harry, getting drunk along with him and their older, wiser, grizzled partners every night. The difference was that Ron had no trouble at all following the rules. Neither did Neville. They were at the bar with him because they had no one to go home to. For them, work was everything, and hanging out with Harry was both a pleasure and -- perhaps, Harry hated to think it but he was pretty sure it was true -- a duty.

"I know just how you feel," Draco burst in suddenly, knocking Harry's thoughts off track.

"What?" he replied, confused.

"Well, I shouldn't say… not _just_ how you feel, I'm sure. But I have feelings like that too. Of not knowing how to fit into the world. Not knowing what I should do next. Not knowing what I am doing wrong or how to fix it."

"Yeah?" Harry said, wanting to know what Draco meant. It was always good when misery had some company.

"I have spent most of this school year, or so it feels," Draco said, looking at his feet, "working myself to the bone to get excellent marks, and getting rejected over and over again for every position, internship, apprenticeship, training programme, job and post-Hogwarts course of study I could dredge up even the remotest information about or interest in. No one wants _Draco Malfoy_ around except Minerva McGonagall. That crap Snape's wraith was spewing about my reputation? All true."

"Does McGonagall not want to hire you after you finish?" Harry suggested, knowing it was a long shot.

"I did ask, actually," Draco said, sounding despondent. "But she said that right now the only position she could justify filling was Binns' job, and we both agreed that I wasn't even remotely qualified to teach history."

"Having only learned history from Binns," Harry couldn't resist saying, and they laughed together, briefly. "Slughorn's sticking with Hogwarts for a while, huh?"

"Apparently," Draco said. "His seventh years do better on the N.E.W.T.s than Snape's did, and he has complete confidence that you and McGonagall will clear up 'this little wraith problem' quickly, or so he told my potions class the day before you arrived. Hogwarts is a safe place while there are still a few minor Death Eaters on the loose as well. But I think that's an excuse. I think he just forgot how much he likes the trappings of teaching. The free room and board, the prestige, the rising stars who feel indebted to him. I don't think he'll be leaving Hogwarts for years to come. And no other school will have me. I've asked."

"That sucks," Harry said, trying to sound sympathetic. But he couldn't think of a single other thing to say.

"I'm going to go buy a sandwich," Draco said standing abruptly. "You want anything?"

"Not right now," Harry said. "Thanks, though." And he stared at the countryside speeding by, mulling over everything they had both said.

Chapter 9

The rest of the trip was boring and uneventful. They scrupulously avoided alcohol that night, and went to sleep alone in separate, tiny bunk beds in an efficiently designed sleeper car. They changed trains and rode on, arriving in London in the evening, just as planned.

It was a matter of little difficulty to find the public Floo they had used some days before when they had arrived, but as they stood in line to use it, Harry couldn't help but feel the two of them had unfinished business they should talk over before they headed back to Hogwarts.

"Come and sit over there with me?" he asked Draco. He nodded toward a small table with his head, and looking surprised but agreeable, Draco followed him.

Casting a few spells to ensure their privacy, Harry put his two increasingly heavy cases down and encouraged Draco to do the same. They sat next to each other at a small picnic table that -- based on the crisp packets and other discarded wrappers stuffed in the small rubbish bin nearby, was usually a place people grabbed a bite of junk food before or after catching a train.

"I've been thinking about all the things we were both saying," Harry confessed, not able to look at Draco. Instead he looked at his own hands, clasped earnestly -- almost ridiculously -- in front of himself. "I haven't been willing to quit my job because, well, basically, what the hell else would I do? I know from when they make me take holiday, I go a bit nutty without work." He felt himself blush, but Draco murmured something encouraging sounding, so he kept bumbling forward.

"You don't have a plan of what to do next, and I don't have a plan of what I can do _instead_. But -- on this weirdo assignment, anyway -- we made a good team. You talk to strangers better, I know a lot of spells."

"You cast strong spells, too," Draco interjected quietly.

"Er, thanks," Harry said, and felt his face warm. But he liked the compliment, there was no denying that.

"I think you have better hearing," Harry rushed back in, not wanting to lose his train of thought, "and I think I have maybe faster reflexes. You followed my lead really well when we hit a crisis, and you're good with magical objects, too. So, er, what I am trying to say is, er…"

"Maybe we could work together?" Draco replied, and he sounded shockingly hopeful, so Harry turned and looked at his face, to see what Draco actually looked like right now. He looked lit up from within, like this half-brained idea was the best thing he'd ever heard. Like his dead puppy had just jumped up off the floor: alive, with a winning lotto ticket in her mouth.

"Er, yeah," Harry said, and he smiled at Draco, who smiled enormously back.

"I take it you like the idea," Harry said, laughing.

"Well. I suppose it has some value, but I will have to take it under consideration. _Serious_ consideration," Draco said, with a sudden, intense formality. Startled, Harry looked at him, and Draco looked back, intent. Then he giggled, almost silently. Harry started to laugh, and the two of them cracked up laughing together again, sitting at a dirty picnic table in a crowded train station.

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

McGonagall had indeed left her Floo open.

"I am glad to see you gentlemen." She was looking up from her desk, sounding stern and stressed. Harry recognized the attitude. Robards tended to adopt it when a case was going badly.

"Has the situation worsened?" he asked, feeling terribly professional.

McGonagall looked into Harry's eyes for a moment, frowning. Then she seemed to remember that he was no longer her student. She straightened her back but remained seated. "Yes," she said. "Since you were last here Snape's wraith seems to have lost even more control. Two students -- a first year and a second year -- have been sent to the infirmary already today. One…" she paused and shook her head. "The Slytherin child will probably have to be transferred to St. Mungo's."

"Then let's do this," Harry said with determination. "I have the ring right here." He took the ring Snape had attempted to bribe his mother with from his pocket. Above the water it looked far more pedestrian, but it was the right ring. The little engraving of "SS LE" was still quite readable.

"Draaaycoooooo!" came a disembodied voice. "You found it! You'll save me!"

McGonagall stood. "He is here. Let us hurry. I have Gryffindor's sword." She lifted it, and at her nod, Harry put the ring on a table she'd apparently set aside for this purpose. She raised it higher, looked Harry in the eye, and slammed it down on the ring. The ringing noise echoed through her office, hurting Harry's ears. He grinned tentatively at Draco, until…

"Draaaycoooooo!" the disembodied voice wailed. "Kill it!"

"Oh dear," McGonagall said.

"Indeed," Draco said. Then he straightened his back and stood a bit closer to Harry. He spoke, however, to McGonagall.

"Headmistress," he began. He sounded tentative, but she put the sword down and nodded at him with encouragement. "Ideally, Harry's mother would accept this ring now. Correct?"

McGonagall frowned as though she wanted to remind Draco that Lily Evans Potter was long dead, but she said only "Yes?"

"Well, perhaps," he leaned over and took the slightly squashed ring off the table, "Harry could accept it in her place? But I think it has to be formally offered to him."

"With a proposal, an offer of some sort," Harry jumped in. "I've been holding that thing in my pocket for hours and it had no effect on Snape. I think I have to do more than take the ring from another's hand. I think we have to recreate the original mess as well as possible."

McGonagall looked uncertain, but Draco jumped right in. "Oh yes, I quite agree! That's perfect. Here. I'll make you some sort of offer, you take the ring and accept the offer, all right?"

Harry blushed bright red at this, but he agreed. "Sounds good," he said, wondering if Draco was going to suggest something lascivious and half hoping he would.

"So do you think you could offer Harry something simple?" McGonagall said quickly, looking at Harry's blush. "You are welcome to have dinner here, of course. Why don't you offer Harry to share dinner with you tonight at the faculty table?"

"Offer to skin his worthless hide!" yelled the disembodied voice. "Offer to kick him in the head!" the voice continued, and then began to laugh: an eerie, thin sound that sounded increasingly like a scream of pain. Things began to fall from the highest shelves. One of them shattered.

"Hurry, gentlemen," McGonagall said, sounding nervous.

"Harry," Draco said, speaking in a loud, clear voice. He drew even closer to Harry and took Harry's right hand into both of his own. "Will you be my business partner? Complete equals? Solving problems, our own men, no paperwork, wizards for hire?"

McGonagall's surprise was overshadowed by Harry's enormous grin. "With pleasure, Draco!" he called out enthusiastically, and took the ring from Draco's outstretched hand as Draco moved to hand it over. Harry slipped the ring onto his own pinky as far down as it would go, which was right above the knuckle. It glowed intensely in the light from the window, filling Harry's eyes with it; and then a new voice joined them in their expectant waiting.

"Congratulations all," said a calm voice that was unmistakably Snape's.

Everyone looked in a different direction, so Snape spoke again. "Over here, behind the curtain. You have successfully banished my wraith and therefore my portraits have awakened. Would someone please open this curtain? This is quite unpleasant."

McGonagall flicked her wand at a curtained portrait in the far corner of the room. Behind it was a portrait of Snape so handsome that Harry could have asked to take issue with the painter. The man's nose wasn't enormous, it was Roman and regal. His hair wasn't greasy, it was shiny. His eyes held wisdom, not venom.

Harry snorted quietly. No one seemed to notice except Draco, who moved slightly closer to Harry and reached for his left hand. Harry let him take it and they all faced the portrait.

"I apologise for the terrible behaviour of what you have been calling my 'wraith,'" Snape entoned solemnly. "I should like to authorise turning over my entire estate to Hogwarts to assist in paying for the damages."

"Thank you, Severus," McGonagall said calmly. Then she turned to Harry and Draco. Her eyes flicked to their joined hands, but she said nothing. "I do hope you will both stay to dinner, gentlemen. The school owes you both a tremendous debt of thanks. Harry, you are also welcome to stay the night if you would like. The house elves can easily make up a guest suite for you. Until then, however, I have a great deal of work to do. Including informing a large number of parents that you have solved the problem that most concerned them!" She smiled, and Harry bowed at her, feeling joyous. Still holding Draco's hand, he moved for the door and they left together, trotting down the stairs together, still hand in hand.

"Damn!" Harry said triumphantly when they stood in front of the gargoyle together at the bottom of the stairs. "We did it!" he leaned against the wall and grinned, looking up into Draco's eyes. "I meant it too," he said earnestly. "I'd love to do that with you. As soon as you finish school we should open up a business, just like you said. I can take the next few months to figure out how we advertise and what we can legally do if we aren't aurors and how much we charge and stuff, all right? We can base it out of my house, I'd bet. This is going to be great!"

"Really?" Draco looked uncertain. "I didn't know if you really meant it. You had a lot of pressure on you to say 'yes,' after all."

"I don't think Snape's wraith would have disappeared if I hadn't truly meant it," Harry said, feeling confident. "Yeah, I think it sounds brill, Draco." he paused, and then reached over to brush Draco's fringe out of his eyes. "Besides, think of the… fringe benefits." He grinned widely, and Draco looked at him for a short, stunned moment, before he laughed abruptly, once.

"You're incorrigible," Draco said, but he leaned in to steal a kiss, and Harry gave it to him enthusiastically, not caring who might see.

Finite


End file.
